Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Republika Srpska President Ana Trisic-Babic and former president Milorad Dodik at his Jerusalem office to discuss bilateral ties and regional issues, the Prime Minister’s Office stated on Wednesday.
According to the PMO, both sides expressed a shared intention to deepen ties and pursue cooperation across multiple fields.
Netanyahu conveyed appreciation for “their longstanding support for Israel and their firm stand against any manifestation of antisemitism.”
Dodik has been a prominent figure in relations with Israel and has voiced public support over the years.
He also faced legal and political turmoil in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2025, when a court issued an international arrest warrant against him for allegedly undermining the constitutional order.
But despite scrapping a series of separatist laws under Western pressure, Dodik has continued to advocate the Serb Republic's secession from Bosnia.
Republika Srpska declared independence nearly 35 years ago
Republika Srpska declared its independence in 1992 as then-federal Yugoslavia broke up, triggering a 3-1/2-year war in which 100,000 people were killed and two million made homeless, most of them Muslim Bosniaks.
Republika Srpska and the Bosniak-Croat Federation, linked via a weak central government, comprise the largely decentralized Bosnia, which emerged from that conflict under the US-brokered 1995 Dayton peace accords.
Bosnia's Constitutional Court has twice ruled that the statehood day, which coincides with Serbian Orthodox Christian celebrations of Christmas, is illegal as it discriminates against the region's Catholic Croats and Muslim Bosniaks.