As Europe remains divided over Israel, North Macedonia finds new reasons to stand with Jerusalem

Timco Mucunski had never been to Israel before this week, but North Macedonia’s foreign minister arrived in Jerusalem for a brief, 24-hour visit, at a time when relations between the two countries are gathering considerable momentum.

“We have had a very strong relationship with Israel, but also myself with Gideon, over the last few years. We have collaborated in many areas,” Mucunski said. “I think that this visit is an opportunity to move the bilateral relationship to the next step, to move from a place where we’re at right now, which is excellent bilateral relations, to having that relationship develop into various areas of mutual importance.”

Earlier in the day, Mucunski met Sa’ar, with the two ministers signing cooperation agreements and discussing the expansion of ties in agriculture, water management, security, innovation, tourism, health, and education. Mucunski told the Post that investment and cooperation between the countries’ defense industries were also discussed, alongside an idea likely to be considerably more visible to ordinary Israelis and Macedonians: restoring direct flights between the countries.

The aim is to encourage more Israelis to visit North Macedonia, but Mucunski’s ambitions go beyond tourism. Situated at the intersection of two major European transport routes, Corridors 8 and 10, and investing heavily in energy connectivity, North Macedonia wants to present itself as an entry point for Israeli companies looking toward Europe.

“We want to be a gateway for Israelis who want to visit Europe,” he said. “But we want to be a gateway not just for tourists, but also for Israeli businesses.

“We can also be a gateway for Israelis who want to invest in a European market that hasn’t been fully utilized by the Israeli business community. But we can also be a market for exports. So in that sense, I think that these are just some of the opportunities where there is a mutual interest between the two countries.”

Mucunski’s arrival was also the latest in a noticeable series of contacts between the countries this year. In January, Macedonian MP Rashela Mizrahi, the country’s first Jewish lawmaker, led what was billed as a first-of-its-kind parliamentary delegation to Israel, meeting Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana and other Israeli officials.

Asked whether that tempo represented a deliberate change, Mucunski said it reflected a policy emanating from the top of the Macedonian government.

“Prime Minister Mickoski himself believes that stronger collaboration with Israel is a necessity for our country to also be successful,” he said of ties between two countries with diplomatic relations since 1995.

“There are many things that we can learn from you. There are many common values that we share, both on a domestic as well as international level. And in that sense, since the formation of our government, we have made the bilateral relationship with Israel one of the priorities of our foreign policy.”

Although it took until his second year as foreign minister to make the journey himself, Mucunski said the lack of a visit should not be mistaken for a lack of contact, stressing that he and Sa’ar confer often about issues that affect their countries.

There is also a more personal and painful episode behind the warmth with which Mucunski talks about the relationship.

On March 16, 2025, a fire tore through the Pulse nightclub in the eastern Macedonian city of Kocani, killing dozens and injuring scores more, many of them young people. The scale of the disaster overwhelmed a country of fewer than two million people and prompted offers of assistance from abroad.

Among the first foreign ministers to telephone Mucunski was Sa’ar.

The call left a great impression on the Macedonians. Israel dispatched a medical delegation to the Balkan state, and within roughly a day of the disaster Israeli doctors were working alongside Macedonian teams, treating some of the badly injured.

“Within a day of the tragedy itself, they were performing surgery in our hospitals and helping our doctors, with their experience and their in-depth knowledge, and helping to save the lives of many young individuals,” Mucunski recalled.

For a foreign minister, bilateral relationships are ordinarily measured in agreements signed, diplomatic votes, trade figures, and official visits, but Mucunski repeatedly returned instead to what happened after Kocani as an example of what he believes the relationship looks like when it is tested away from conference rooms.

“This situation was proof that Israel stands by my country,” he noted.

He sees Macedonia’s diplomatic behavior toward Israel in recent years as the other side of that relationship. “We have also proven that we stand together with Israel in the many different challenges that it faces, as all nations face,” he said. “We have collaborated very successfully in the multilateral forum in the last few years.”

Sa’ar publicly thanked him for precisely that during Monday’s visit, praising North Macedonia for standing alongside Israel in international forums, particularly since the Hamas-led massacres in Israel on October 7, 2023, with Israel facing increased diplomatic pressures.

“North Macedonia has demonstrated its friendship by standing up to these attempts in the international arena,” Sa’ar said. “We appreciate its voting record and its support for Israel. Israel values its friends who stand by it in difficult times.”

For Mucunski, that relationship can be developed without changing the broader direction of Macedonian foreign policy. His country, a NATO member since 2020, is a candidate for European Union membership, and maintains a strategic partnership with the United States. He described those as the three pillars on which his government’s foreign policy rests, with North Macedonia also maintaining full alignment with the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy.

Within that geopolitical framework, Mucunski regards Israel as a natural partner.

“We are thriving democracies, nations that promote the free market and capitalism,” Mucunski said. “My nation and Israel – both on the basis of political ideology, but also on the basis of our global outlook – have more things that unite them rather than divide them.”

At a time when Israel’s relationship with parts of Europe has become increasingly difficult, Mucunski declined to pass judgment on the bilateral relations of individual European governments with Jerusalem. North Macedonia, he said, works with other countries according to its national interests and according to what they can offer one another, provided that cooperation does not conflict with the three central pillars of its foreign policy.

On Iran, however, he was considerably less circumspect.

Mucunski places Tehran firmly among the authoritarian powers he believes threaten the democratic order with which the Balkan country identifies, and his assessment of the Iranian nuclear threat extends well beyond Israel and the Middle East.

“Iran is, without a doubt, a nation that is part of this axis of countries that aims to destabilize democracy and the way of life that we cherish as peoples, as nations in the 21st century,” Mucunski told the Post.

North Macedonia, he said, had been steadfast in supporting the US-led military and diplomatic effort against Iran. It was among the countries that did so publicly at an early stage, he noted, because his government believes US President Donald Trump has taken the correct approach toward the long-term deterrence of Tehran.

That deterrence, in Mucunski’s view, cannot simply mean stopping Iran at the final point of assembling a nuclear weapon. The objective must be to prevent the Islamic Republic from reaching the threshold at which it has the capacity to do so.

“We should not allow Iran, ever, to have the capacity – not to have a nuclear weapon, but to come close to having a nuclear weapon,” he said.

His argument is partly geographical. Iran is often treated internationally as an Israeli, American, or Middle Eastern security problem. But Macedonia views the issue from inside NATO and from the southeastern edge of Europe.

“As we saw, right after the conflict began, there is a substantial geographical proximity as well from Iran to the borders of NATO,” he said. “And the risk is there.”

Mucunski also pointed to the nature of the Iranian government itself, describing the Islamic Republic as an authoritarian regime that suppresses its own population. He pointed to the reaction of Iranians abroad during the conflict as evidence of the depth of opposition to the Islamic Republic.

“There is no doubt that we will stand for democracy,” he said. “We will stand for our common security. The threat of Iran having a nuclear weapon is not a threat to Israeli or American security. It is a threat to European security as well, and anyone who chooses to ignore that is not accepting the reality that we have on the ground.”

Macedonia, he added, would remain steadfast in its support for its NATO ally, the United States, and for Washington’s role in the region.

The discussion inevitably returned to what Israel itself has experienced over the past several years, from October 7 to the confrontation with Iran.

“One cannot even begin to imagine what you have gone through,” Mucunski said. “Not just the situation with Iran, but the horrific events of October 7.”

For him, those events fit within the same argument about the responsibility of democratic states to defend themselves.

“When someone chooses to use violence and terror to attack our democracies and our way of life, we have an obligation to react.”

Another element to North Macedonia’s relationship with Israel predates the governments of Mucunski, Mickoski, and Sa’ar by centuries.

Jewish life existed in the region long before the creation of the modern Macedonian state, but the community was almost annihilated during the Holocaust. In March 1943, more than 7,000 Jews from what is now North Macedonia were deported to Treblinka during the Bulgarian occupation, and virtually none returned.

Today the Jewish community is tiny, but Mucunski was emphatic that its size does not diminish its place within Macedonian society or the country’s understanding of its own history.

“The Jewish community is an integral part of our constitutional order as a nation,” he said, also pointing to the Holocaust Memorial Center in Skopje. “The Jewish community is a very respected and valued part of our society. In that sense, we see this as a very relevant part of our national history.”

The issue, he added, reaches beyond whichever party happens to be in government.

“The Macedonian people will continue to cherish their relationships with the Jewish people,” he said. “We will continue to do everything in our power to fight antisemitism in our country, but also everywhere else that we can.”

This was seen in action earlier this year following an incident in Skopje that the local Jewish community described at the time as the first attack of its kind in the country’s modern history.

On April 12, two men were captured on surveillance footage climbing a fence at a synagogue and Jewish community center before igniting a firebomb. A door and the courtyard were damaged in the blaze, and two men were subsequently charged with terrorism in connection with the attack, while seven people were detained during the investigation.

When the subject was raised with Mucunski in Jerusalem four months later, he recalled the shock caused by the attack, but also focused on the state’s response.

“The national security authorities reacted very promptly,” he said, noting that the alleged perpetrators had been arrested and, to his understanding at the time of the interview, indicted.

“To these types of actions, there must be an immediate reaction, both political and institutional,” Mucunski continued. “Without that, you allow antisemitism to flourish within a society.”

It is a sentiment echoed by Gjorgjievski during his own visit to Israel in June. The Skopje mayor told the Post that the attack was an assault not only on a Jewish building or community but on “the values of Skopje, on peace, coexistence, and the dignity of all our citizens,” while telling the country’s Jews: “You are not alone.”

The prominence of both Gjorgjievski and MP Rashela Mizrahi in the recent exchanges with Israel also illustrates the different levels at which the relationship is developing. Mizrahi – a member of Mucunski and Mickoski’s VMRO-DPMNE political party, and North Macedonia’s first Jewish parliamentarian since independence – has been a prominent advocate of stronger ties with Israel, while Gjorgjievski has sought practical cooperation between Skopje and Israeli municipalities. Mucunski’s visit brought that growing engagement to the level of the two foreign ministries.

Yet on the question of antisemitism, Mucunski was careful not to speak for governments elsewhere in Europe, or to compare Macedonia’s record with theirs. He confined himself to what he could promise about his own country, and after the events of April, his language left little room for ambiguity.

“In our country, this will not be tolerated,” he said. “I cannot speak for other nations, but antisemitism will not be tolerated on the territory of our nation.”

Mucunski’s first journey to Israel ultimately lasted little more than a day, but it came after a year in which the relationship between Jerusalem and Skopje has reached new levels, and moved beyond ceremonial diplomacy. Parliamentary representatives have come to Israel, the mayor of the Macedonian capital has come looking for Israeli expertise, and now the foreign minister has arrived with an explicit mandate from his government to broaden the relationship.

For Mucunski, the experience of Kocani already provided one answer about what he wants the relationship between the two countries to mean. When his country was struck by tragedy, Israeli doctors arrived and went to work alongside their Macedonian colleagues. His government, in turn, has chosen to stand with Israel diplomatically during some of its most difficult years.

It is against that background that Mucunski viewed this week’s visit less as the beginning of a relationship than as an opportunity to deepen one that has already gathered considerable momentum.

“This is my first visit,” he said, “but I am absolutely sure that it will not be my last.”