Free Republic

Sweden is to appoint a special envoy to the Israel-Palestine peace process, Foreign Minister Margot Wallström announced during the presentation of her foreign policy vision in parliament. Wallström presented the ruling center-left Social Democrat-Green coalition government’s foreign policy declaration for the year in the Riksdag on Wednesday morning, continuing an annual tradition. […] Sweden’s relationship with Israel has been increasingly frosty in the past few years. In 2014 it recognized Palestine as a state, and Israeli officials have routinely refused to meet Wallström after she called for investigations into “extrajudicial” killings of Palestinian assailants by Israeli forces. […] Without mentioning...

A spokesperson for Swedish foreign minister Margot Wallström has hit back at a Jewish human rights organization ranking some of her comments among the most anti-Semitic or anti-Israel remarks of 2016. The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC), which is headquartered in Los Angeles, lists the Swedish minister's comments in eighth place in its ranking of the “ten worst global anti-Semitic/anti-Israel incidents”. […] A spokesperson for the Swedish foreign minister hit back at the center on Wednesday. “The list is clearly not serious,” wrote Erik Wirkensjö in an e-mail to public broadcaster SVT. “It mixes up anti-Semitism and criticism of the State...

Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom, who was refused meetings with Israeli ministers during her visit to the region, on Saturday tweeted about her visit to “Palestine”. “Returning from Palestine. Action is needed to save the two state solution. Settlements and demolitions thwart conditions and hope for peace,” tweeted Wallstrom, who visited Ramallah and met with Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmoud Abbas and Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki. The Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported that during her visit to Ramallah, Abbas decorated the Swedish minister with an award he calls the Grand Star of the Order of Jerusalem. Speaking in a press conference...