**JERUSALEM**
Paraguay will relocate its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on Thursday, President Santiago Pena said on Wednesday.
Pena arrived in Israel early Wednesday on the eve of his embassy relocation, a move that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed as “courageous.”
The Israeli Knesset (parliament) held a welcoming session for the Paraguayan president, who also met with his Israeli counterpart Isaac Herzog.
In a written statement, Herzog’s office praised the planned opening of the Paraguayan Embassy in Jerusalem as “historic.”
In May 2017, Paraguay held a ceremony to inaugurate its embassy in Jerusalem. However, in September 2018, the decision was reversed with the embassy relocated back to Tel Aviv.
"Paraguay wants to contribute to an intensification of regional diplomatic efforts to achieve a broad, fair, and lasting peace in the Middle East,” then-Foreign Minister Luis Alberto Castiglioni said.
The US moved its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in mid-2018, in a move that invited widespread international condemnation. Guatemala, Kosovo, and Honduras followed the US move, but the vast majority of countries refused to relocate their embassies to Jerusalem.
Jerusalem remains at the heart of the Israel-Palestine conflict, with Palestinians hoping East Jerusalem, now occupied by Israel, might eventually serve as capital of a future Palestinian state.
\*Writing by Rania Abu Shamala
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