Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attended the inauguration ceremony of the new Paraguayan embassy in Jerusalem on Thursday, along with Paraguayan President Santiago Peña, his wife Leticia Ocampos, Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana, Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Leon and Paraguayan Ambassador to Israel Alejandro Rubin.
At the opening of the ceremony, a festive ribbon cutting was held and a mezuzah was set up at the embassy. Afterwards, Prime Minister Netanyahu held a personal meeting with President Peña in his office, in which the President invited the Prime Minister to visit Paraguay.
From there, the Prime Minister and the President of Paraguay proceeded to a reception event at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where a signing ceremony was held for a number of memorandums of understanding and bilateral agreements.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated during his speech: "We are here in the high-tech area of Jerusalem. Israel is a power of technology and innovation. We have a common interest, President Pania understands economics. He understands all the potential. When you look around, this is the product of the free economic revolution that we did here, and if you had come here a few years ago, there would have been nothing here. But there were these hills – these are the same hills where King David declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel 3,000 years ago."
Netanyahu went on to elaborate on the importance of the city of Jerusalem to the Jewish people: "The national anthem that we just heard talks about the dream of the people for about 2,000 years to return to Jerusalem and rebuild Zion, our national home, our sovereignty, our state, and this is perceived as impossible. It was impossible – we are a small people who were expelled from their country. There are many peoples who have been expelled from their countries in history, most of them have disappeared. Almost all of them are gone. But we refused to disappear and we had strong faith, prayer and a strong desire to return to Jerusalem."
* Kikar Hashabbat contributed to this article.
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