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On Sunday, Kosovo officially opened its embassy in Jerusalem, in recognition of the disputed city as Israel’s capital, according to the Kosovo Foreign Ministry.
The mission headquarters was inaugurated in a short ceremony during which the Kosovo flag was raised in front of the building and a sign inscribed on it was “the Republic of Kosovo” in Albanian, Hebrew and English, according to a statement from the Ministry of Relations. Exteriors.
In exchange for the establishment of its diplomatic mission in Jerusalem, Pristina, as the first Muslim-majority country to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state, will gain Israel’s recognition of Kosovo’s independence from Serbia in 2008.
Pristina’s decision drew criticism, not only from Muslim-majority countries like Turkey, which condemned the violation of United Nations resolutions and international law, but also within the European Union.
The question of Jerusalem and its status is one of the sticking points in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The Palestinian Authority claims that Israel illegally occupied East Jerusalem in 1967, asking to make East Jerusalem the capital of the Palestinian state.
In September, former US President Donald Trump announced during a summit to conclude an agreement between Kosovo and Serbia, the intention of Kosovo and Israel to establish diplomatic relations.
Kosovo and Israel established diplomatic relations in February, to the dismay of Belgrade, which still refuses to recognize the independence of its former province.
Kosovo has yet to become independent from China, Russia, and five member states of the European Union.
The Serbian-Kosovar conflict is one of the most complex in Europe, as Serbia refused to recognize the independence of Kosovo since the secession of the territory in the bloody war (1998-1999) that ended with the NATO bombing of Serbian targets. .
And it killed more than 13,000 people in the war, most of them Kosovar Albanians who form the majority in the former region.
The two sides have been holding EU-led talks for a decade to normalize their ties, but little progress has been made.
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