Fri 04 September 2020:
Serbia will transfer its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, becoming the first European country to follow the US in making the move, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday.
US President Donald Trump said Friday that Kosovo and Israel had agreed to normalizing ties and establishing diplomatic relations in Washington’s latest push for countries around the world to warm ties with Tel Aviv. Former rivals Kosovo and Serbia also committed to economic normalization, Trump said.
“Serbia and Kosovo have each committed to economic normalization,” the US president said alongside officials from Kosovo and Serbia.
After two days of meetings with Trump administration officials, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Kosovo’s Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti agreed to cooperate on a range of economic fronts to attract investment and create jobs.
Israel seized control of East Jerusalem in 1967 and later annexed it in moves never recognised by the international community.
Israel considers the city its undivided capital, but Palestinians see the mostly Arab eastern part of Jerusalem, including the Old City with its holy sites, as the illegally occupied capital of their future state.
The United Nations and the European Union, Israel’s top economic partner, say the city’s final status must be negotiated between Israelis and Palestinians, until which countries should not locate their embassies there.
Ethnic Albanian-majority Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008 after a NATO-led bombing campaign to curtail ethnic warfare. Serbia, backed by its large Slavic and Orthodox Christian ally Russia, does not recognize Kosovo’s independence, a precondition for Belgrade’s future membership in the European Union.
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