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The Government of the Republic of Serbia

In the service of citizens

Serbia wants to modernise its partnership with Israel

Belgrade/Jerusalem, 31 August 2020

Prime Minister Ana Brnabic stated today that Serbia is openly proud of the history of true friendship between Serbs and Jews, but wants to focus on a common future and modernise the partnership with Israel.

In the author's text for the Israeli newspaper "Jerusalem Post", Brnabic underlined that Serbia will never forget our common suffering – 500,000 Serbs and 30,000 Jews who were killed in horribly sadistic ways by Croatian fascists in extermination camps, such as Jasenovac.

Also, as she added, Serbia will never forget its own suffering, such as the permanent expulsion of 200,000 Serbs from Kosovo-Metohija and the ethnic cleansing of 250,000 Serbs from Croatia during the 1990s.

She reminded that Serbia and Israel are connected by the Zionist visionary Theodor Herzl, whose name today bears a street in Zemun, and David Albala, a Serbian war hero of Jewish origin who fought for Serbia in the Balkan wars and the First World War, and that Serbia was the first country in the world to support the Balfour Declaration.

The Prime Minister also mentioned that the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, addressing the participants in the conference of the American-Israeli Committee on Public Affairs (AIPAC) in Washington in March, announced that Belgrade would open a department of the Serbian Chamber of Commerce and the Serbian State Office in Jerusalem.

Our common difficult past and current challenges make us wary of security threats posed by the future, which is why Serbia considers the development of even closer defense ties with Israel, from which it will buy defensive weapons, Brnabic emphasised.

She conveyed that Serbia, in the economic field, hopes for further expansion of two-way investments and the signing of a free trade agreement with Israel, one of the most developed economies in the world.

Serbia is the only country in the world that has free trade agreements with the EU, Russia and Turkey, Brnabic said, adding that including Israel on the list would create additional opportunities for economic cooperation between trade actors in Serbia and Israel.

Serbs and Jews know everything about their common history, and now is the time to use that common history to modernize the partnership between our two countries, the Prime Minister concluded.