As Sweden heads to polls, Israel and Palestine policies are on the ballot

Stockholm, Sweden – This Sunday, Sweden will vote in a knife-edge general election that could change the country’s stance on Israel.

In 2014, Sweden became the first European Union member state to recognise Palestine.

The decision strained relations with Israel, with then Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman stating that Sweden did not understand that relations in the Middle East are more complicated than assembling IKEA furniture.

Now, as Swedes head to the polls, the far-right Sweden Democrats , the Nordic nation’s second-largest political party, want that recognition revoked.

But a Novus survey released on Monday suggested 50.3 percent support a left-wing coalition compared with 47.9 percent for the current right-wing government.

The Israel-Palestine conflict has been baked into the political landscape ever since Sweden’s Count Folke Bernadotte , the United Nations’ first mediator for Palestine, was assassinated in 1948 by the Zionist paramilitary group Lehi, widely known as the Stern Gang, in Jerusalem.

Forty years later, Sweden brokered talks in Stockholm between Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and a delegation of prominent American Jews. Days later, Washington opened dialogue with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

On the right: The governing Moderates, Christian Democrats and Liberals, plus the Sweden Democrats , who have propped up the government from outside since all four parties signed an agreement in 2022.