Benjamin Netanyahu visited Dublin years before becoming Israeli prime minister, aiming to establish a diplomatic presence in the capital.

The Israeli embassy is currently closing.

In February 1990, Mr. Netanyahu was deputy foreign minister in the Likud government and Ireland assumed the presidency of what was then the European Community (EC).

Records released by the National Archives in Dublin show that the Foreign Office prepared a brief summary of his career, so that officials could familiarize themselves with a man who would become a defining figure in Israeli politics.

His meeting with the Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Gerry Collins, took place in Dublin on February 21, 1990.

Mr Netanyahu suggested that there was a “natural feeling of sympathy towards Israel among the Irish people”, but that relations had not been improved by Irish soldiers killed in Lebanon while serving in Finil.

Many of these attacks have been blamed on Israeli-backed Lebanese militias.

Mr Netanyahu told Mr Collins that 95% of the Israeli people were against Palestinian aspirations and defended Israel’s refusal to withdraw from territories it had occupied since 1967.

He was also asked about settlements in the occupied territories and responded by saying that only a fraction of a percentage of Jewish immigrants to Israel lived there.

He argued that they were neither encouraged nor encouraged to live there.

Mr Collins cited a statement by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir in the Knesset the previous week, in which he said he would strengthen Jewish settlements across “Judea, Samaria, Gaza and the Golan”.

Judea and Samaria are names used by Israel to refer to the West Bank.

The meeting report said that when Mr. Shamir’s statement was put to Mr. Netanyahu, he “made no response.”

At the time of the meeting, Ireland was one of the few states in Europe without an Israeli embassy, ​​nor did it have an embassy in Israel.

This was the subject of much correspondence between the Israeli Embassy in London, which included Ireland, and the Foreign Office.

Mr Netanyahu said Ireland was important to Israel, and not just because of its then EU presidency.

While Israel will soon have embassies in all the new Eastern European states, Mr Netanyahu said he did not want Ireland “to lag behind either in intensity or in intimacy of diplomatic contacts with Israel.

The absence of an Israeli embassy in Dublin was a source of concern for Ireland’s small Jewish population at the time.

In 1992, Mr Collins met with the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland.

Joe Briscoe, whose father Robert Briscoe had been involved in arms smuggling into Ireland during the War of Independence, told him that the Jewish community was seen as a “proxy for an official Israeli presence” in Ireland. and that she was blamed for many actions. Israel’s actions.

An Israeli embassy in Ireland was opened in December 1993 and an Irish embassy in Israel was opened three years later.

However, Israel announced in late 2024 that it would close its embassy in Dublin, and Israel’s foreign minister accused Ireland of “anti-Semitic rhetoric” and crossing “all red lines in its relations with Israel.”

Ireland had earlier that year recognized Palestinian statehood and announced its intention to intervene in South Africa’s case against Israel for genocide at the International Court of Justice.

Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris has rejected the claims and accused Israel of “diverting attention” from the deaths of children in the Gaza conflict.