Alicante (Spain)/A nation’s foreign policy is, in its purest expression, the main tool of a State to guarantee its survival, promote its development and protect its citizens on the global stage. However, when it is hijacked by ideological proselytism and false moralism, diplomacy ceases to be an instrument of State and becomes a mere exercise in political theater. In Havana’s inventory of international failures over the past six decades, no anomaly better illustrates this dysfunction than the prolonged and absurd severing of diplomatic relations with the State of Israel.
To understand the magnitude of this nonsense, it is imperative to return to the genesis of the error. During the summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in Algiers, held from September 5 to 9, 1973, Fidel Castro unilaterally announced the complete severing of relations with Jerusalem. Weeks later, Cuban meddling went from rhetoric to direct armed aggression: Havana dispatched troops and tank brigades to the Golan Heights to fight on the Syrian side during the Yom Kippur War.
Half a century later, the shortsightedness of that maneuver is unsustainable. The Arab actors who led that conflict themselves—Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994—understood that the perpetuity of the war was a dead end, signed peace and today maintain embassies, trade and close cooperation with Israel. Nations such as the United Arab Emirates and Morocco have recently joined them. While Israel’s former enemies today share agricultural, military and desalination technology with Jerusalem to benefit its populations, Cuba remains anchored in the trenches of a war that the belligerents themselves have already ended.
A rigorous analysis of Cuban geopolitics reveals that this position is not due to ethics, but rather to a calculated media maneuver.
The official justification for maintaining this diplomatic paralysis has been a supposed “unwavering and indestructible support” for the Palestinian cause. However, a rigorous analysis of Cuban geopolitics reveals that this position is not due to ethics, but rather a calculated media maneuver. Defending the Palestinian cause helps the regime to wash its face internationally and garner automatic sympathies in the circles of the global left, projecting a humanist face that hides a deep and systemic double standard.
If Cuban foreign policy were truly governed by the rejection of crimes against humanity and state violence, its embassies would be closed in half a dozen allied capitals. Hypocrisy is mathematically demonstrable. Cuba did not hesitate to diplomatically shield the ayatollah regime in Iran while it massacred its own people; Havana’s silence was absolute in the face of the more than 1,500 civilians murdered in the “Bloody November” of 2019, and complicit in the repression of January 2026, whose figures remain the subject of dispute but that organizations such as Hrana and media such as Sunday Times and CBS News place it in a range from nearly 6,000 confirmed deaths to more than 20,000 according to sources from activists and local medical personnel—well above the “several thousand” that the regime itself has acknowledged.
Likewise, the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs never considered breaking ties with Saudi Arabia, despite the fact that the Saudi intervention in the war in Yemen triggered the worst humanitarian crisis of the century: according to an estimate by the United Nations Development Program published in November 2021, the conflict would have left some 377,000 deaths from direct and indirect causes – bombings, famines and preventable diseases – by the end of that year, a figure that humanitarian organizations agree on. in that it has only continued to grow since then. And, of course, Havana maintains a strategic embrace with Vladimir Putin’s Russia, justifying a war of aggression in Ukraine that has devastated entire cities like Mariupol, massacred tens of thousands of civilians and caused the largest refugee crisis in Europe since 1945.
By refusing to establish relations with Israel, the Cuban Government sacrifices the food plate of its citizens on the altar of an empty revolutionary aesthetic
War crimes, violations of international law and abuses against the civilian population are absolutely condemnable and must be denounced in the appropriate forums. But diplomatic relations between States transcend local conflicts. As the classical doctrine contained in Satow’s Diplomatic Practicean academic reference of modern diplomacy, the establishment and maintenance of relations rests on mutual consent between States and constitutes the indispensable channel to manage any bilateral link, beyond substantive differences. Cutting that communication cable in the name of supposed ideological purity does not punish the adversary; It punishes the nation itself, isolating it from opportunity and real influence.
At this point, the doctrine of international relations is implacable with Cuban actions. The father of political realism, Hans Morgenthau, argued that the national interest—and not abstract moralism or legalism—should guide the foreign policy decisions of any state that aspires to defend its citizens. By refusing to engage with Israel—a global giant in agricultural technology that could reverse the island’s chronic food crisis—the Cuban government sacrifices its citizens’ food plates on the altar of an empty revolutionary aesthetic.
Nations with unquestionable geopolitical and diplomatic weight, such as France, the United Kingdom, and even Western adversary powers such as Russia or China, understand this premise perfectly. All of these countries have raised their voices countless times in the UN Security Council to condemn the military disproportion in Gaza, criticize the actions of Hamas or declare the settlements in the West Bank illegal. However, it has not occurred to any of them that the logical response to these conflicts should be the breaking of diplomatic relations with the State of Israel. They keep their embassies open because they understand that influencing a crisis requires having a seat at the table, and because the commercial, technological and security interests of their citizens are above the friction of third parties.
Former Canadian diplomat Daryl Copeland, in his work Guerrilla Diplomacysuggests that a good part of contemporary diplomacy has lost effectiveness by being reduced to messages aimed at public opinion instead of seeking a genuine commitment between States. Havana’s foreign policy towards the Middle East fits that diagnosis: sterile public relations that do not save the life of a single Palestinian, but impoverish and isolate millions of Cubans.
It was Cuba that promoted resolutions for decades to equate Zionism with racism in the United Nations. Consequently, it is the Island’s responsibility to begin the thaw.
The unavoidable question on the threshold of a democratic transition is: who should take the first step to normalize bilateral relations? Diplomacy and common sense dictate that the actor who cast the first stone is the one who should extend the olive branch. It was Cuba that unilaterally broke the bond in 1973. It was Cuba that sent tanks to the Golan to shed blood in a foreign conflict. It was Cuba that promoted resolutions for decades to equate Zionism with racism in the United Nations. Consequently, it is up to the Island to initiate the thaw.
The reestablishment of relations with Israel is the great pending issue of Cuban foreign policy, not only because of the incalculable value of the bilateral cooperation that would be unlocked, but because of what this act would symbolize. It would mean the end of the era of diplomatic hypocrisy. It would mark the moment when Cuba stops using human rights as a convenient pretext and recovers an adult, pragmatic foreign policy focused, finally, on the well-being, prosperity and future of its own people.
