{"id":1913,"date":"2023-09-24T10:55:16","date_gmt":"2023-09-24T08:55:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/?p=1913"},"modified":"2025-06-10T15:44:02","modified_gmt":"2025-06-10T13:44:02","slug":"reversing-the-trend-in-swedish-israel-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/reversing-the-trend-in-swedish-israel-policy\/","title":{"rendered":"Reversing the trend in Swedish-Israel policy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Reversing the trend in Swedish-Israel policy<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n
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A delegation of ten MPs from Sweden made a week-long visit to Israel at the turn of August-September. More than half of the ruling party\u2019s Christian Democratic 19 members of parliament met both Israel\u2019s prime minister and foreign minister.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u2013 I\u2019m happy to see that there\u2019s a change in Swedish policy, said Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu during the 40-minute meeting with 10 Swedish MPs. Photo: Government Press Office<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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O<\/span>n Monday, August 28, the Swedish parliamentarians were welcomed to Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s office and met the Israeli Prime Minister in a 40-minute long, historic meeting.<\/p>\n

\u2013 I want to thank you for your great and consistent support for Israel. I\u2019m happy to see that there\u2019s a change in Swedish policy, Netanyahu said, stressing that it was about time.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Not only for Israeli-Swedish relations but also for Sweden itself. I believe that our relations can yield great results in many areas. So I think this is an important beginning, he continued.<\/p>\n

During the meeting, the Christian Democrats from Sweden promised to work toward Sweden moving its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and for Swedish funding paid to the UN agency UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) to end and that responsibility for Palestinian the refugees is transferred to UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees).<\/p>\n

Another issue discussed was efforts to counter anti-Semitism.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Sweden has just opened a Holocaust Museum, said Mikael Oscarsson and recalled Sweden\u2019s work to curb anti-Semitism both in Sweden and internationally.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Full attention<\/strong><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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Prime Minister Netanyahu responded by referring to the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg\u2019s rescue operation of tens of thousands of Jews during the Second World War, an operation which he believes binds Sweden and Israel together.<\/p>\n

The delegates\u2019 week-long visit to Israel received a lot of attention in Israeli media, and Sweden\u2019s former defense minister Peter Hultqvist from the Social Democrat party wrote in one of Sweden\u2019s largest morning newspapers, Svenska Dagbladet, that the visit means a \u201cnew course on the Israel issue\u201d.<\/p>\n

Relations between Israel and Sweden deteriorated seriously when Sweden, as the only country in the EU \u2013 apart from Cyprus (1988) and a handful of communist dictatorships in Eastern Europe prior to the fall of the Soviet Empire in 1991 \u2013 recognized Palestine without making counterclaims in 2014. Relations deteriorated further when Foreign Minister Margot Wallstr\u00f6m in 2016 criticized Israel for using \u201cextrajudicial executions\u201d in its fight against acts of terror. In the same year, Sweden and Iran signed a lucrative trade agreement just as a new report from Business Sweden predicted that Sweden\u2019s exports to Iran could soon increase to between 15 and 20 billion kronor a year.<\/p>\n

At the beginning of 2017, a number of female representatives of the Swedish government\u2019s feminist foreign policy made a high-profile trip to Iran, where, wearing Muslim veils, they met Iran\u2019s religious leadership.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Hezbollah threats<\/strong><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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Iran supports a number of anti-Israel terror groups around Israel, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, which at the end of July threatened Sweden with attacks due to the Koran burnings carried out in Stockholm recently. In early August, an unsuccessful attack was made on the Swedish embassy in Beirut, which according to observers was carried out by Hezbollah.<\/p>\n

Immediately after the Swedish delegates\u2019 meeting with Netanyahu, the Christian Democrats also visited the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Minister Eli Cohen, who began by thanking them for their friendship and support. He stated that the last two years have meant a very positive development of relations between the two countries.<\/p>\n

\u2013 I was very happy to visit your country a few months ago to develop our relations, he said.<\/p>\n

During the visit to Israel, the Christian Democratic parliamentary group also met the opposition politician and chairman of the Knesset\u2019s Israel-Sweden friendship association, Naama Lazimi from Labor.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reversing the trend in Swedish-Israel policy A delegation of ten MPs from Sweden made a week-long visit to Israel at the turn of August-September. More than half of the ruling party\u2019s Christian Democratic 19 members of parliament met both Israel\u2019s prime minister and foreign minister. \u2013 I\u2019m happy to see that there\u2019s a change in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1894,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1913"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3581,"href":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1913\/revisions\/3581"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}