Israel officials snub Swedish minister after row

No Israeli officials will meet Sweden’s foreign minister during her trip to the region, a spokesman said Tuesday, after she called for a probe into the killings of Palestinian assailants.
Erik Wirkensjo, spokesman for Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom, told AFP she had wanted to meet both Israeli and Palestinian officials during her visit from Thursday to Saturday.
“This time it was not possible to visit Israel,” Wirkensjo said.
Asked why there were no meetings planned, he said such questions must be “asked to the Israelis.”
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon blamed “schedule problems” and declined to provide further details.
Earlier, Wallstrom told Swedish news agency TT: “I would have gladly seen myself travel to Israel as well, but unfortunately they do not welcome it.”
There is no international airport in the Palestinian territories. Wirkensjo refused to comment on whether Wallstrom would fly to an Israeli airport and then travel to the occupied West Bank or go via Jordan.
Wallstrom will meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Foreign Minister Riad Al-Malki during her trip. Wallstrom had earlier said Israel must avoid “extrajudicial executions.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced Wallstrom’s call as “outrageous.”
Netanyahu poster
Israeli police opened an investigation on Tuesday after a poster showing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a hangman’s noose was displayed at an art school in Jerusalem.
The poster, designed to look like the iconic “Hope” picture of US President Barack Obama but instead reading “Rope,” drew sharp condemnation from Culture Minister Miri Regev and led to debate over freedom of expression. Copies of the poster, which showed a noose dangling in front of Netanyahu’s face, hung briefly in a stairwell at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design before it was taken down, Israeli media reported.
Police said they opened an investigation over “suspicions of incitement.” The academy said the poster was “part of an ongoing conversation on what constitutes incitement through art”.
“The work in question is an expression by an individual student and in no way, shape or form reflects the views of our institution, our faculty or administration,” Michal Turgeman, Bezalel spokeswoman, said in a statement. “We plan to cooperate fully in the ongoing investigation.” Regev, who has frequently clashed with left-leaning Israeli artists, called for state funding to the academy to be cut.
“Artistic freedom is not freedom to incite,” she wrote on her Facebook page. The academy’s student union said “we certainly do not support messages calling for violence and incitement of any kind whatever and even oppose that.”
“However, as a design institution, we believe in the freedom of expression and art and are for providing an expression for the entire rainbow of opinions, within the boundaries of the law,” it said.

Source: Arab News