[1] Sweden voted in favor of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine proposed by UNSCOP (chaired by Swedish lawyer Emil Sandström) in 1947, which provided the legal foundation of the creation of the State of Israel, and offered the services of Count Folke Bernadotte, a Swedish diplomat and nephew of the then-reigning King Gustaf V of Sweden, to assist the United Nations in negotiations between Arab and Palestinian residents.

The Swedish nobleman arranged a shaky truce between the new State of Israel and Arab neighbors who had mounted an attack on it in May 1948, then attempted to secure a more lasting peace.

[2] Lehi saw Bernadotte as a British and Arab puppet, and thus a serious threat to the emerging State of Israel, and feared that the provisional Israeli government would accept his plan, which it considered disastrous.

The Israeli Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, quickly outlawed Lehi as "a gang of rogues, cowards and low schemers," but five months later, he declared a general amnesty and released them all.

[15] Olof Palme, who succeeded Erlander as Swedish Prime Minister and leader of the Social Democratic Party in 1969, was more critical of the United States and its allies, including Israel.

[16] In October 1973, during the Yom Kippur War, Sweden's Minister for Foreign Affairs Krister Wickman criticized Israel and said the problems in the Middle East could not be solved by military superiority.

[20] In January 2004, Israel's ambassador to Sweden Zvi Mazel vandalized a piece of artwork by Swedish-Israeli artist Dror Feiler on display at the Swedish Museum of National Antiquities in Stockholm, presenting a portrait of Palestinian suicide bomber Hanadi Jaradat as "Snow White."

[22] In August 2009, a diplomatic row erupted after the publication of an article in the Swedish daily Aftonbladet that claimed the Israel Defense Forces had engaged in organ harvesting from dead Palestinians.

[26] Lieberman also stated "Löfven had hastened to make declarations ... apparently before he could delve into the matter and understand it is the Palestinians who have constituted the obstacle to progress" in reaching a peace accord with Israel.

In December, Liberman announced his plan to boycott the visit anticipated by his Swedish counterpart, and added that, "Relations in the Middle East are a lot more complex than the self-assembly furniture of IKEA."

Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström responded to Liberman with the comment, "I will be happy to send him a flat pack of IKEA furniture and he will also see that what you need to put that together is, first of all, a partner.

The purpose of the visit had been primarily to honor Raoul Wallenberg, the diplomat from Sweden who saved tens of thousands of Jews from being sent to concentration camps by issuing them Swedish papers during World War II.