Overview
- Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar announced on Thursday that Israel will open its first resident embassy in Ljubljana and ordered the foreign ministry to speed up logistics and begin a search for a resident ambassador.
- Hours after Janez Janša’s new government was sworn in, Janša ordered the Palestinian flag removed from a government building and Slovenia’s incoming foreign minister, Tone Kajzer, pledged “all the assistance necessary” to help establish the mission.
- The moves followed a week in which an Israeli passenger plane was denied entry, a decision that Slovenian officials reversed when they restored authorization for Israir to operate Tel Aviv–Ljubljana flights.
- Relations had sharply deteriorated under the previous prime minister, Robert Golob, whose government recognised a Palestinian state in 2024, imposed travel bans on senior Israeli figures and sanctioned two far-right Israeli ministers for inflammatory statements.
- The bilateral reset could affect EU deliberations because actions such as sanctions on Israeli ministers require wider member-state agreement, and observers say Slovenia’s policy change may reduce pressure for EU-level measures while reversing diplomatic isolation felt by Slovenia’s tiny Jewish community.