After Sweden announces a special envoy to the Israeli Palestinian conflict, Jerusalem reacts with bitter sarcasm to Stockholm.
“Given the extraordinary successes of this Swedish government in peace making all over the world, we are deeply grateful for the decision to finally solve this region’s illnesses,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Emmanuel Nahshon tells The Times of Israel. “Why couldn’t they come sooner?”
Israel has a history of attempting to burn Sweden with sarcastic responses. In 2014, after Stockholm recognized Palestine, then-foreign minister Avigdor Liberman quipped that “the Swedish government must understand that relations in the Middle East are more complex than one of IKEA’s flat-pack pieces of furniture.”
At the time, Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström shot back that building Middle East peace was actually pretty much the same as putting together a Liatorp bookcase or Hurdal wardrobe.
“I will be happy to send him a flat pack of IKEA furniture and he will also see that what you need to put it together is, first of all, a partner. And you also need to cooperate and you need a good manual and I think we have most of those elements,” she said in an interview with CNN.
— with Raphael Ahren
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