The invitation that the former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni received to the Bled Strategic Forum is causing quite a stir in the coalition ranks. The not-so-silent clash is taking place mainly between the Freedom Movement party (Gibanje Svoboda) and the Left party (Levica). The former are supposedly the ones who invited Livni, while the latter have called for the invitation to be withdrawn.
On Wednesday, the President of the far-left Left party, Asta Vrečko, spoke out, writing on the social network X: “We in the Left party call on the host to withdraw the invitation to the Bled Strategic Forum that was sent to Tzipi Livni, former Deputy Prime Minister of Israel, Foreign Minister and member of the Israeli War Cabinet.”
Vrečko also accused the former Foreign Minister of having played a role in the war and the expulsion of the Palestinian population. The Slovenian political left is also strongly – some prominent international relations experts argue that it borders on excessively – in favour of Palestinian political aspirations and activities. This sympathy, as Dr Renato Podbersič explained in a conversation with us, has its roots in the communist Yugoslavia, as well as in “thinly disguised vulgar anti-Semitism.”
And yet, these tendencies are clearly not expressed in quite the same way in all manifestations of the transitional left. This was first seen in the complications over Slovenia’s recognition of Palestine. The coalition parties worked together to overturn the Rules of Procedure of the National Assembly and the Constitution to bring about the recognition, but in the days and weeks before, the Prime Minister’s adviser on international affairs and national security, Vojko Volk, and the former MEP and unsuccessful candidate for the presidency of the Social Democrats party (Socialni Demokrati – SD), Milan Brglez, publicly clashed with differing opinions on the matter.
Namely, the latter accused Volk of opposing the recognition of Palestine. Volk reacted to Brglez’s statements, which were summarised in the magazine Reporter, in the Slovenian press Agency (STA), saying: “It is strange that he shows a complete lack of understanding of how the government works and how government decisions are taken. It is even more extraordinary that he does not understand Slovenia’s special responsibility as a member of the United Nations Security Council. What is even more extraordinary is that he is attacking the government in which he is offering himself as Foreign Minister,” Volk wrote at the time.
The newspaper Delo reports that former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni will come to the Bled Strategic Forum at the invitation of Prime Minister Robert Golob‘s office. Her presence at one of the panels will be “balanced” by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with the presence of the Secretary-General of the Palestinian National Initiative, Mustafa Barghouti.
Will the Left perhaps even boycott the Bled Strategic Forum?
“Balancing” the Bled Strategic Forum is clearly not enough for the Left party and the NGO sphere. After the rejection of the call by the Palestinian Rights Movement and the Solidarity Committee for a Free Palestine for the invitation to Livni to be withdrawn, the extreme Left party even announced a boycott if the invitation is not withdrawn. Whether they will follow through on their threat, which represents a new deterioration in relations within a coalition already burdened by a series of other affairs, will be seen soon enough. Namely, the Bled Strategic Forum starts on the 2nd of September.
Ž. K.
