🇦🇷 Argentina is preparing to scrap restrictions on foreigners buying rural land, with President Javier Milei arguing the reforms will attract investment, create jobs and accelerate economic growth.

Israelis have been caught multiple times in the past years setting fire to forests in Patagonia in what appears to be a deliberate land clearing attempt in preparation for the building of future settlements.

In November 2025, Javier Milei and Benjamin Netanyahu opened direct flights between Buenos Aires and Tel Aviv, a sign of the good relations between the two leaders and their respective countries, as part of the Isaac Accords, the Latin American version of the Abraham Accords, meant to increase Israel's diplomatic outreach and reduce its international isolation in the wake of the Gaza Genocide.

The direct flights came as a result of most EU countries announcing they would enforce the ICC war crime related arrest warrants on Israeli politicians who wanted to access Argentina without the risk of being detained when changing flights at a European airport.

Argentina is home to a 300k strong Jewish community, the largest Jewish community in Latin America. In recent years there has been a massive influx of Israeli "tourists" to Patagonia which coincided with the worst wildfires the region has seen in its entire history. Local Argentinians blamed the Israeli "tourists" for the wildfires. The wildfires of January 2026 destroyed 77,000 hectares (190,000 acres) of land. Argentine authorities arrested an Israeli citizen in relation to the wildfires.

In the late 19th century, there was a plan by Zionist leaders to establish a Jewish state in Patagonia as an alternative to Theodore Herzl's plan to colonize Palestine. The plan was created by Jewish-German banker, Maurice de Hirsch who founded the Jewish Colonization Association and was the biggest sponsor of Jewish emigration to Argentina. This colonization attempt came to be known in Argentina as "Plan Andinia" and is labelled by the ADL as an "antisemitic conspiracy theory".

While the Jewish state in Patagonia never came to fruition, without Maurice de Hirsch's activism, Argentina would not have had its Jewish community

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