Serbia exported more than 8 million dollars’ worth of arms to Israel in July, coinciding with five Israeli military flights from Belgrade to an airbase near Be’er Sheva, while the Balkan country continued to ignore concerns about war crimes against Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
According to customs data from a portal that consolidates Serbian business data, Yugoimport-SDPR exported arms and/or ammunition to Israel worth slightly more than 7.3 million euros in July. This is the total value of Serbian arms/ammunition exports to the country in 2024, amounting to 23.1 million euros, writes Haaretz. The July shipments coincided with five identified Israeli military flights from Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport to Israel’s Nevatim Airbase.
BIRN/Haaretz had previously identified six Israeli military flights between the two cities this year through open-source flight tracking websites.
At least 15 flights have been made to Israel from Belgrade and the southern city of Niš since December 2023, placing Serbia among the main source countries for arms flights landing at the Nevatim Airbase since the beginning of the war.
The calculation is based on open-source data collected by Haaretz over the past 11 months. The unprecedented air transport, which involved more than 230 cargo planes, delivered arms primarily from the strategic military reserves of the United States around the world.
On August 15, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk commented on the situation in Gaza: “This unimaginable situation is largely a result of the ongoing failure of the Israeli Defense Forces to adhere to the rules of war.
“On average, about 130 people have been killed each day in Gaza over the past 10 months. The level of destruction of homes, hospitals, schools, and places of worship by the Israeli military is profoundly shocking,” said Turk.
The five July flights occurred over two days. Two flights were carried out on July 21 by an Israeli cargo plane flying on behalf of the Air Force from Belgrade to Nevatim Airbase; the following day, three different Israeli Air Force Lockheed C130 planes – serial numbers 545, 663, and 667 – landed in Belgrade and quickly returned to Nevatim.
BIRN/Haaretz identified three more Israeli military flights in August from Belgrade and Niš to Nevatim, but the journalists were unable to identify the corresponding data for arms/ammunition exports.
All Serbian arms sales to Israel this year came after the International Court of Justice, the UN’s highest court, ordered Israel on January 26 to prevent its forces from committing or inciting acts of genocide against Palestinians, in response to a genocide lawsuit filed by South Africa against Israel. A final decision on whether Israel has indeed committed genocide in Gaza could take years.
On April 5, the UN Human Rights Council adopted a call “to end the sale, transfer, and diversion of arms, ammunition, and other military equipment to Israel… to prevent further violations of international humanitarian law and violations and abuses of human rights.”
And on May 20, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague sought an arrest warrant against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Finally, on June 20, UN experts urged countries and companies to stop transfers of arms and ammunition to Israel, stating that these could “constitute serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law and risk complicity in international crimes, including genocide.”
Already, in the following month, Serbia delivered military equipment worth 7.3 million euros to Israel.
The Serbian government has not yet commented on the contents of the shipments, and on March 8, the Serbian Ministry of Trade refused BIRN’s request for information specifying when export permits were issued and what types of arms were delivered, declaring the information as “strictly confidential.”
In an August interview with the Jerusalem Post, Serbian Foreign Minister Marko Djuric declined to comment on Haaretz/BIRN’s findings and whether the arms shipments represent the official state policy.
“Serbia will always call for an end to violence and human suffering, and will support a peaceful, negotiated solution to be mutually agreed upon by all parties involved,” Djuric said.
In February, a week after the first arms shipment, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić and Netanyahu spoke by phone. In an Instagram post, Vučić stated that they discussed “further improvement of bilateral relations.”
Netanyahu tweeted:
“Vučić is a true friend of Israel. I expressed my gratitude for his steadfast support, both in words and deeds.”
The Israeli Ambassador to Serbia recently said that Israel does not recognize the genocide committed by Serbs against Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina and that Israel did not participate in the UN vote to establish an international day of remembrance for the genocide in Srebrenica.
