ABSTRACT
Up to 2009, foreign relations between Lithuania and Israel had been shaped by multiple interconnected factors, such as the historical Lithuanian and Jewish experience, necessity for the Holocaust recognition, tense domestic policy on Jewish property compensation, as well as external pressures, namely, from international Jewish communities and US official bodies. It is likely that no other bilateral relations of Lithuanian foreign policy have been influenced by such a rich and sometimes only intuitively palpable political, cultural, and historical context. After assuming the presidency of Lithuania, Grybauskaitė accepted the prevailing largely pro-Israel attitudes of Lithuanian diplomacy. Nonetheless, she enriched the already intricate relationship by trying to move closer to the dominant EU attitude towards the situation in the Middle East.
