Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and Linde plan to meet on Monday, and she will also meet with President Isaac Herzog. She also plans to visit Yad Vashem and participate in an event organized by Sweden’s ambassador to Israel that marks 70 years of relations between the countries. She plans to visit Ramallah on the second day of her visit.

Linde will be the first Swedish foreign minister to visit Israel since Sweden recognized a Palestinian state in 2014, which led to a diplomatic battle, which continued when Sweden’s foreign minister at the time Margot Wallström accused Israel of “extraordinary killings” of Palestinians. Israel withdrew its ambassador from Stockholm for a month, and there was no contact between the countries at ministerial level until this year. Lapid himself accused Wallstrom of anti-Semitism at an Israeli rally in Stockholm in 2016.

Foreign Minister Yair Lapid speaks at a press conference in Washington on October 13, 2021 (credit: SHLOMI AMSALEM / GPO)

Lapid and Linde met at the EU Foreign Affairs Council in July, where she asked to get relations between Israel and Sweden back on track, and he agreed. They spoke by telephone in September, the first official conversation between Israeli and Swedish foreign ministers in seven years, and Sweden announced shortly after it would boycott the anti-Israel Durban IV conference at the UN.

The ties between Israel and Sweden also fit with Lapid’s stated goal of strengthening Israel’s ties to liberal, democratic countries.

Sweden has only two innovation offices abroad, one in California and one in Tel Aviv, which makes innovation a major driving force for Stockholm’s efforts to improve relations, says a diplomatic source.

Last week, Transport Minister and Labor Party leader Merav Michaeli spoke with Linde about “the enormous importance of empowering women and girls and ensuring that our voices are heard in all aspects of decision-making” in honor of Girl’s International Day, said Michaeli.