A planned visit to Israel by the Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström has been cancelled as no Israeli official was prepared to receive her over her pro-Palestine position.
Speaking with reporters in the Swedish metropolitan city of Stockholm Wallstrom said the Palestinians have been grappling with the Israeli occupation of their land for 50 years while Gaza has been blockaded for nearly a decade.
She added that the Oslo Accord failed to restore peace in the occupied territories.
“We look out for long-term solutions to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict” she stated.
Sweden’s Foreign Minister Margot Wallström had planned to visit Israel this Thursday. The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu however refused to meet her.
Israeli officials claimed the move is due to scheduling conflicts but informed sources attributed the snub to Sweden’s pro-Palestine position.
A Foreign Ministry official told Haaretz that while Wallstrom had reached out to try and arrange meetings with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other ministers she had been informed that these would not be possible due to schedule considerations.
The 61-year-old Social Democrat has repeatedly enraged Israel starting with Sweden’s recognition of a Palestinian state shortly after she became foreign minister in October 2014.
In one of her retorts she identified the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as one of the factors explaining why “there are so many people who have become radicalized.”
In December of last year she called on Israel to halt what she called “extrajudicial executions” against anti-occupation knife-wielding Palestinians following up with a demand for “thorough” investigations into the killing of Palestinians by the Israeli occupation army
