A joint delegation of the Foreign Ministry, IDF, and Home Front Command will depart for Venezuela on Tuesday in response to the severe earthquake, following a directive from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar, according to the Foreign Ministry. The mission follows coordination review by the National Security Council and includes engineering experts from the Home Front Command, led by Brig. Gen. Elad Adari, and diplomatic staff led by Ambassador Yoed Magen.
Israel is dispatching a joint delegation of the Foreign Ministry, the IDF, and the Home Front Command to earthquake-stricken Venezuela on Tuesday, following a directive from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar, the Foreign Ministry announced Monday evening. The delegation includes engineering experts from the Home Front Command, led by its chief of staff, Brig. Gen. Elad Adari, and diplomatic staff led by Ambassador Yoed Magen, who grew up in Venezuela. The mission follows a coordination review by the National Security Council, which was first reported by The Zioneer earlier Monday evening as a step enabling the deployment.
The announcement marks the formalization of a plan that had been reported in stages: at 22:18 Jerusalem on Monday, The Zioneer published the first version of this story, based on a report by journalist Tomer Almagor (N12), that a Home Front Command delegation would depart for a rescue mission despite the absence of diplomatic relations between Israel and Venezuela since 2009. Minutes later, the same bulletin added that the National Security Council had completed a coordination review for the delegation. The current dispatch, published shortly after, confirms the delegation's composition and leadership, with the Foreign Ministry naming Brig. Gen. Adari and Ambassador Magen as heads.
The new government-level delegation follows an earlier Israeli relief effort: as The Zioneer reported on Monday at 14:25 Jerusalem, a 16-person team from the NGOs Magen, Ready for Rescue, and SmartAID had already deployed in the quake zone, operating in Valencia and La Guaira. That mission, covered by i24NEWS on Friday, was the first Israeli presence on the ground. The broader international response has swelled to at least 16 nations, with the EU activating its civil protection mechanism and deploying over 520 rescuers, as The Zioneer reported on Saturday.
It remains unclear whether the government delegation will coordinate directly with the NGO team already in the country, or whether additional specialists from the Home Front Command and the National Emergency Management Authority (Rachel), who the Foreign Ministry said are expected to join in coming days, will operate under a unified command. The deployment also takes place in a country with which Israel has had no formal diplomatic relations since 2009, raising unresolved questions about on-the-ground logistics and host-government coordination.
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Source and signal
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