Slovakia's Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shake hands after their meeting in Jerusalem, Feb 19, 2019. [Photo/Agencies]
JERUSALEM, Middle East - Israel's prime minister met with his Slovakian counterpart on Tuesday in a first set of sit-downs with Eastern European leaders after a high-profile summit was canceled over a rift with Poland.
Benjamin Netanyahu hosted Peter Pellegrini on Tuesday in Jerusalem and was expected to meet Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban before hosting all three for lunch at his official residence.
The meetings are the result of the cancellation of a planned summit of the Visegrad Group, which includes Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia, after Poland withdrew to protest Israeli leaders' comments about Poland's complicity in the Holocaust.
The gathering began to unravel last week when Netanyahu, during a visit to Warsaw, told reporters that "Poles cooperated with the Nazis". The comments infuriated his Polish hosts, who reject suggestions that their country collaborated with Adolf Hitler.
Poland's prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, announced on Sunday that he was pulling out of the summit and that his foreign minister would go instead.
But Morawiecki canceled Polish participation altogether after the comments made by Israel's acting foreign minister, Israel Katz, that he denounced as "racist" and "absolutely unacceptable".
Katz, who was only appointed to the foreign minister's post on Sunday, made his remarks in a pair of TV interviews.
Noting that he himself is a child of Holocaust survivors, Katz said that "Poles collaborated with the Nazis, definitely".
After Poland's withdrawal from the meeting, the Czech Republic announced the summit was canceled.
Israel's Foreign Ministry confirmed on Monday that the summit had been called off, saying all four European countries had to be present.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Slovak Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini are already in Israel, and Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis still planned to arrive.
Instead, a government official said Netanyahu and the three remaining European leaders were expected to hold a series of bilateral meetings on Tuesday, along with a group news conference and joint lunch. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the schedule had still not been finalized.
Netanyahu, in a speech on Monday to visiting Jewish-American leaders, made no mention of the crisis.
The Visegrad Group meets once a year. After Netanyahu was invited to participate in the meeting in Budapest last year, Jerusalem was supposed to host the 2019 meeting.
The cancellation of the summit was a serious blow to Netanyahu's foreign policy. The Israeli leader has been putting efforts over the past years into growing ties with V4 countries as part of his strategy to change the EU consensus on the Palestinians and Iran.
