{"id":215670,"date":"2026-08-03T15:39:33","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T13:39:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/serbiantimes.info\/en\/?p=215670"},"modified":"2026-08-03T15:42:34","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T13:42:34","slug":"from-ammunition-to-drones-how-serbia-became-one-of-israels-most-important-partners-in-europe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/serbiantimes.info\/en\/from-ammunition-to-drones-how-serbia-became-one-of-israels-most-important-partners-in-europe\/","title":{"rendered":"FROM AMMUNITION TO DRONES: How Serbia became one of Israel’s most important partners in Europe!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A recent conference held in the National Assembly of Serbia drew attention to an important, but in international media insufficiently covered aspect of Israeli foreign policy – the accelerated strengthening of relations between Israel and Serbia.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ties between the two countries have particularly intensified during almost three years of conflict in the Middle East. At a time when Israel’s relations with several European states have been severely damaged, primarily due to the war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the partnership between Jerusalem and Belgrade is recording a steady rise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This relationship is not without its complexities. Serbia’s traditionally close ties with Russia, as well as President Aleksandar Vu\u010di\u0107’s efforts to maintain a balanced relationship in public between the world’s major powers, place Belgrade in a specific geopolitical position. Still, that has not prevented the two countries from significantly deepening cooperation in recent years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That relations are developing has also been noticed by their critics. United Nations Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, during a visit to Belgrade in March, criticized Serbia for military cooperation with Israel, assessing that Belgrade “unashamedly” delivers military equipment to the Israeli army. In Jerusalem and Belgrade, such an assessment is rejected, but the very fact that the topic reached the focus of the international public shows how significant the cooperation has become.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the portal Balkan Insight and the Israeli newspaper Haaretz<\/em>, Israeli officials contacted Serbian colleagues as early as October 8, 2023, just a day after the Hamas attack on Israel. The request was simple \u2013 urgent delivery of ammunition. Serbia approved the export very quickly, and the first shipments soon arrived at the Nevatim Airbase near Beersheba.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the war progressed, military cooperation between the two countries grew as well. By mid-2024, Serbia exported ammunition worth around 16.3 million euros to Israel, while during the entirety of 2023, before the outbreak of the war, the export value amounted to only about 540,000 euros.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly thanked President Aleksandar Vu\u010di\u0107 in February 2024 for what he called “unwavering support, both in words and deeds,” calling him a “true friend of Israel.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The trend continued in the following years. During 2025, the value of Serbian military equipment exports to Israel rose by about 140 percent and reached approximately 114 million euros, while according to available data as many as 38 cargo flights from Serbia delivered ammunition to Israel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, cooperation is not reduced solely to arms exports. One of the most significant projects is a five-year contract worth about 1.6 billion dollars between the Israeli company Elbit Systems and the Serbian state-owned company SDPR. The agreement provides for the joint production of reconnaissance and combat unmanned aerial vehicles in Serbia, the development of modern systems based on artificial intelligence, long-range precision missiles, loitering ammunition, and electronic warfare. Serbia previously acquired PULS rocket systems as well as Hermes 900 unmanned aerial vehicles from Israel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2026, the two countries further strengthened cooperation by signing an agreement on intelligence and defense data exchange, raising the security partnership to an even higher level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Israel, Serbia represents an important step in diversifying sources of military equipment and partners, thereby reducing reliance solely on the United States. For Serbia, cooperation with Israel contributes to the modernization of the Serbian Armed Forces and simultaneously enables a more balanced foreign policy between traditional partners like Russia and China and Western allies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The geopolitical importance of Serbia grows further in light of the development of the IMEC (India\u2013Middle East\u2013Europe) economic corridor, which Israel is developing together with India, the United Arab Emirates, and Greece. In that project, Serbia could become an important land link between Mediterranean ports and Central Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such developments have not gone unnoticed by other regional actors either. Turkey, which seeks to expand its political and military influence in the Balkans, has in recent years intensified cooperation with Croatia, Albania, and Kosovo, while the Israeli-Serbian partnership develops in parallel. With this, the Balkans is increasingly becoming an arena of geopolitical competition among various regional powers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, ties between Serbia and Israel were not created yesterday. Their roots reach much deeper into history. Serbs and Jews share the experience of suffering in World War II under the Usta\u0161e regime of the Independent State of Croatia, while a large number of Jews found refuge in the Partisan movement in which Serbs made up the majority of fighters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even more interesting is a lesser-known historical fact. The grandfather of Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, lived in Zemun and was a close associate of Rabbi Judah Alkalai, one of the first ideologues of the Jewish national revival. It was Alkalai who found inspiration in the successful Serbian uprisings against the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the 19th century, believing that Jews could also follow the path of national liberation. Many historians believe that through his grandfather, young Herzl first came into contact with those ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From those historical ties to today’s contracts on unmanned aerial vehicles, intelligence cooperation, and the military industry, more than a century has passed. But it is precisely the combination of shared interests, historical heritage, and new geopolitical circumstances that makes the partnership between Serbia and Israel today one of the most interesting alliances in modern Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Source<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong>: Jerusalem Post; Photo<\/strong>: Gov.il<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A recent conference held in the National Assembly of Serbia drew attention to an important, but in international media insufficiently covered aspect of Israeli foreign policy – the accelerated strengthening of relations between Israel and Serbia. Ties between the two countries have particularly intensified during almost three years of conflict in the Middle East. At […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2169,"featured_media":215671,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[72,13792,129,2772,181,13793,113],"class_list":["post-215670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking","tag-bliski-istok","tag-diplomatski-odnosi","tag-izrael","tag-naoruzanje","tag-oruzje","tag-partnerstvo","tag-srbija","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"Serbiantimes.info EN","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/serbiantimes.info\/en","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/serbiantimes.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/serbiantimes.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/serbiantimes.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/serbiantimes.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2169"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/serbiantimes.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215670"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/serbiantimes.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":215712,"href":"https:\/\/serbiantimes.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215670\/revisions\/215712"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/serbiantimes.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/serbiantimes.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/serbiantimes.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/serbiantimes.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}