War on Gaza: Serbia’s arms sales to Israel put the country’s political relations in the spotlight

When Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic spoke at a pro-Israel lobbying event in Washington four years ago, he proudly declared that Belgrade’s support for Israel was rock solid and could be traced back three decades before the founding of the State of Israel in 1948.

He claimed that in 1917, Serbia’s representative in Washington, Milenko Vesnic, supported the creation of a state called Israel after signing the Balfour Declaration, a document of less than 70 words that reaffirmed Britain’s support for a Jewish homeland.

“There are many things that can be defined as common denominators between Serbs and Jews,” Vucic told the American-Israel Public Relations Committee (AIPAC), which has long been considered one of the most powerful interest groups in Washington.

“We suffered the same terrible fate in the concentration camps during World War II,” Vucic said. “We love the Jewish people, we have always had good relations,” he added.

Vucic’s meeting with AIPAC came as former enemies Serbia and Kosovo were hammering out a plan to normalize economic relations under a deal brokered by the Trump administration.

Although Vucic and leading Serbian politicians had refused to recognize Kosovo’s independence, Vucic was convinced that agreeing to the US-brokered economic agreement would bring benefits.

It was widely believed that the economic agreement would see the US open an office of its development finance company in Belgrade and could send signals to investors and credit agencies that Serbia is open for business.

However, following the agreement signed later in 2020, Kosovo was recognized as an independent state by Israel and, in response, opened its embassy in Jerusalem, becoming the first Muslim-majority country to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Serbian politicians, including Vucic, expressed outrage at Israel’s recognition of Kosovo and Serbia downgraded its representation in Israel, albeit quietly.

“For Serbian politicians, Israel is a gateway to the USA”

– Maja Bjelos, Belgrade Center for Security Policy

Even though the political relationship seemed strained on the surface, ties remained, particularly in the defense sector.

The Israeli newspapers Haaretz and Balkan Insight recently revealed that Belgrade is still exporting large quantities of weapons and ammunition to Israel and has even increased its exports this year in light of the current Gaza war.

Both publications reported that Serbia exported at least 16.3 million euros ($17.1 million) worth of weapons to Israel using Israeli military aircraft and some civilian aircraft using Greek airspace. The weapons may also have included important 155mm artillery shells from Serbia’s state-owned company Krusik.

A source familiar with Israel’s relations with Serbia said the arms exports were not surprising.

“Israel has been lobbying the Vucic government for years,” the source told Middle East Eye.

Interests coincide

Serbia has the largest defense industry in the Western Balkans and arms exports amounted to around $1.2 billion in 2021.

Belgrade is also known to export to other Middle Eastern countries, with reports from 2018 indicating a significant increase in sales to the UAE. According to previous MEE research, the UAE has signed lucrative contracts to develop Serbia’s defense industry.

In 2020, Vucic said in an interview with the Jerusalem Post that he had planned to make large arms purchases from Israel, adding that no one in Serbia had heard of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, better known as BDS.

“Serbia will always do its best to align its interests with those of Israel,” he said.

The following year he opened an official branch of a Serbian government agency, the Serbian Chamber of Commerce in Jerusalem.

Maja Bjelos, a senior researcher at the Belgrade Center for Security Policy, said Vucic’s pragmatic and opportunistic foreign policy included arms sales to Israel and Ukraine.

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“For Serbian politicians, Israel is seen as a gateway to the US government and to improving bilateral relations with the US,” she told MEE.

A curious dimension of Vucic’s relationship with Israel is his own election campaigns.

Israeli political consultant Asaf Eisin has been advising the Serbian president since 2004, when he led the election campaign for the mayoralty of Belgrade. Vucic lost the election by just 4,000 votes.

“Eisin has been my friend for almost a decade. He helped me then, he helps us now and he will always help us,” Vucic once said, according to Serbian media outlet Nova.

The newspaper reported that Eisin worked on Vucic’s 2017 presidential campaign alongside another Israeli political consultant, Aron Saviv, who owns the firm Saviv Strategies and Campaigns.

On his official website, Saviv said he “helped Vucic win the presidential election in Serbia” in 2017.

And then there is another connection: Shaviv served as campaign manager in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 2015 election campaign.

Meanwhile, that same year, Eisin advised Israeli President Isaac Herzog during the parliamentary election campaign.

A regional diplomat said the idea that Vucic was selling weapons to Israel for political reasons was far-fetched.

“Belgrade is completely bankrupt and they are selling weapons to anyone they can get,” he told MEE, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Geared towards another Trump term

Nikola Lunic, executive director of the Belgrade-based Strategic Policy Council, also downplayed the importance of Vucic’s ties to Israel during his election campaign, telling MEE that relations between Israel and Serbia were not particularly close due to the dispute over Israel’s unilateral recognition of Kosovo.

“(The Israelis advising Vucic) are professionals working for the election campaign. I am not sure whether this is about political devotion or foreign policy goals,” he said.

But earlier this year, when arms shipments were being sent from Belgrade to Israel on February 26, Vucic spoke by phone with Netanyahu, who described the Serbian president as a “true friend.”

“I expressed my gratitude for his unwavering support, both in word and deed,” Netanyahu said. said on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

If Trump wins the US presidential election in November, Serbia’s relations with Israel could be strengthened

– Maja Bjelos, Belgrade Center for Security Policy

“Through these sales and connections with Israeli politicians and lobbyists, the Serbian president wants to establish himself as an important partner of the West in the Balkans and increase his influence with Western decision-makers, especially in the United States,” Bjelos said.

Lunic, also a former Serbian military officer, said that just as Serbia’s indirect ammunition sales to Ukraine were made, the weapons to Israel were most likely passed on through third parties.

“Belgrade undoubtedly has end-user certificates and we assume no responsibility for their continued use,” Lunic said.

“Some foreign companies may be buying these weapons. Apart from the end-user certificates we have, we have no way of knowing which country they are re-exporting them to, whether Israel is one of them or not.”

Lunic added that arms sales to Ukraine were carried out in a similar manner, through companies that had no direct ties to Ukraine.

In addition, there are political considerations which, according to analysts, are more important to Vucic than arms sales.

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The Serbian president often mentions that the grandparents of Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, were born in Belgrade and still rest in the city’s Jewish cemetery. He also mentions that his country was the first to pass a law on the restitution of property of Holocaust victims. This law allowed the government to pay Jewish communities 30 million euros for property for which there were no living heirs.

Analysts say Vucic also knows how to use global developments to his advantage.

“Israel did not vote for the UN General Assembly resolution on the Srebrenica genocide, while Serbia, in turn, did not join the states parties to the Rome Statute Declaration in support of the International Criminal Court as an independent and impartial institution,” Bjelos said.

Bjelos said Vucic likely expects Trump to run for a second term and is determined to curry favor with him if he wins re-election and returns to the White House.

“If Trump wins the US presidential election in November, Serbia’s relations with Israel could be strengthened, which in turn would further strengthen relations within the global populist right,” Bjelos added.