A $2 billion arms pipeline with Serbia, a classified-data pact, a joint drone factory, a €3 billion air shield for Greece and an ever-warmer Albania — the deals read less like isolated contracts and more like a strategy: insurance against a Europe turning colder toward Israel.
Published 24 October 2026 · 00:47 GMT
A $2 billion arms pipeline with Serbia, a classified-data pact, a joint drone factory, a €3 billion air shield for Greece and an ever-warmer Albania — the deals read less like isolated contracts and more like a strategy: insurance against a Europe turning colder toward Israel. On November 18, 2024, Elbit Systems announced two contracts worth about $335 million — PULS rocket artillery and Hermes 900 drones — with a European country later revealed to be Serbia.
On October 23, 2026, Al Jazeera’s NewsFeed put the question on screen in plain language: “Why is Israel increasing its presence in the Balkans?” Correspondent Aida Duratovic’s answer was a tour of the peninsula: leaders, she reported, are “deepening ties with Israel through defence, surveillance, and political backing.”
The milestones: on April 29, 2026, Serbia’s parliament backed a classified defence-data pact with Israel — a legal fast lane for arms contracts — days after Vučić announced joint Serbian-Israeli drone production on Serbian soil. On August 31, Israel and Greece signed the Achilles Shield, a €3 billion ($3.5 billion) air-defence system for Athens. On October 12, Israel’s foreign minister was in Tirana, hailing Albania’s Edi Rama as a “steadfast friend of Israel” as the two governments signed an expanded cooperation deal.
A belt of partners on Europe’s southeastern flank who buy Israeli weapons, share Israeli intelligence, host Israeli-licensed production — and do not join the European governments now restricting arms trade with Israel. With Spain, France and Italy all restricting defence ties with Israel, the Balkans offer Jerusalem something rarer than money: reliability.
The spine of the story is Serbia. In November 2024, Elbit Systems announced two contracts worth about $335 million — PULS rocket artillery and Hermes 900 drones — with a European country later revealed to be Serbia. In August 2025 came the follow-on: a $1.635 billion, five-year contract covering long-range missiles, loitering munitions, electronic warfare and C4ISR digitisation, with deliveries through 2030.
The flow runs both ways. Serbian arms exports to Israel rose from €3 million in 2023 to €114 million in 2025 — a 42-fold increase. Aviation tracking shows Israeli cargo aircraft making 20 flights to Belgrade in 2024, 38 in 2025 and 17 more in early 2026, much of it carrying 155-mm shells. This spring the relationship went industrial: Vučić announced a joint drone plant — “half and half” — which BIRN and Haaretz placed in the Šimanovci zone, owned 51 percent by Elbit and 49 percent by Yugoimport SDPR.
Politics cleared the runway. In late April 2026, Jerusalem hosted the first Serbia–Israel Strategic Dialogue, where Foreign Minister Marko Đurić and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared a strategic partnership; a free-trade agreement is under negotiation.
Greece is the other pillar: the August 31, 2026 signing covers Rafael’s David’s Sling and SPYDER, IAI’s BARAK MX, ELTA radars and a new command-and-control network, plus a €26 million Drone Dome contract. Greece becomes only the second David’s Sling customer after Finland.
Albania is the third front. After cyberattacks struck its government systems, Israel supplied protective technologies; a 2023 cybersecurity agreement and defence memorandum led to an Elbit contract for drones and artillery — and a UAV factory on Albanian soil. Rama addressed the Knesset in January 2026. Quieter cyber cooperation extends to Montenegro and North Macedonia.
The most consequential document remains unread: the classified defence-data agreement was approved for provisional application, but its terms — what data, what classification levels, what safeguards — have not been published. Nor is it public which future contracts the fast lane is meant to carry, or where the jointly produced Šimanovci drones will be deployed or sold.
Two reported shadows hang over the Serbian file. Haaretz has reported that Israel Einhorn, an adviser to Prime Minister Netanyahu and a suspect in corruption investigations in Israel, resides in Serbia — and that Serbian authorities have declined Israeli requests for his temporary arrest. Separately, the Middle East Forum reports Israeli cyber technology sold to Serbia has enabled mass-surveillance capabilities “allegedly deployed during domestic protests.”
Unresolved too: how Washington’s export-licence regime will treat co-produced systems; whether Belgrade’s 2020 pledge to move its embassy to Jerusalem still stands; and how far Ankara’s deepening defence ties with Croatia, Albania and Kosovo will harden into a rival bloc.
Israel’s Balkan push is best read as a hedge against geopolitical isolation. As Middle East Forum analysts put it, Jerusalem has “declined to choose sides” in the region, forging partnerships on both sides of its fault lines to preserve reach on a continent grown more hostile. With Spain embargoing defence trade, France squeezing Israeli firms out of Eurosatory and Italy freezing cooperation, every Balkan contract is also political insurance: partners who will not vote for sanctions and will keep buying.
There is a material dimension. Serbia gives Israel what sanctions-era Russia and embargo-minded Europe cannot: a reliable European ammunition supplier as Gaza and Lebanon strain Israeli stockpiles — and a sanctions-proof production floor beyond EU consensus politics. Athens is buying more than missiles: the Achilles Shield makes Israel the architect of a NATO member’s integrated air defence, with Greek industrial participation near €750 million. The war with Iran earlier this year is the context in which all of this hardened.
Strip away the ceremony and both sides are diversifying, not converting. Serbia still buys Chinese and Russian platforms and still courts Brussels for EU membership. Israel remains overwhelmingly dependent on the United States for weapons. What the Balkan deals offer each is optionality: modernisation without choosing a camp for Belgrade; a European foothold independent of Paris, Berlin or Madrid for Jerusalem.
That transactionalism explains the pattern’s limits: the Balkans are not moving as a bloc. Croatia’s Gaza policy is paralysed by a rift between its prime minister and president; Slovenia’s previous government imposed an arms embargo while conservatives now seek to reverse course; Bosnia is split between Bosniak solidarity with Palestinians and Republika Srpska’s backing of Israel. Albania and Kosovo align with Washington first, Jerusalem second. The “network” is real — but it is bilateral deals, not a coalition.
Because the bet is hedged by design. Defence ties with Israel let Serbia draw tacitly closer to the West — diversifying away from Russia — without the political price of a clean break, while the ammunition trade buys goodwill in Washington. Jerusalem gets a partner inside Europe’s institutional waiting room: an EU candidate that votes with it, buys from it, and cannot easily be pressured through EU consensus. It is the logic of mid-level powers in a transactional age — horizontal connections, built quickly, owed to no bloc.
The first shockwave is regional rivalry. Turkey is watching — and moving. Ankara has warned against Israel’s regional ambitions and is deepening its own defence ties with Croatia, Albania and Kosovo. A September 2026 report by the Turkish think tank ORSAM assessed that the Achilles Shield could significantly expand Greece’s air-threat detection in the Aegean.
The second is domestic. The reported deployment of surveillance capabilities during Serbian protests — if confirmed — would fold Israeli technology into Balkan politics’ most sensitive question: how governments treat dissent. Opposition MPs already voted against the classified-data agreement, complaining the ministry would not explain the urgency. And the 42-fold surge in Serbian arms exports feeds the complicity debate, as UN experts call for halting weapons deliveries to Israel.
The third is institutional. An EU candidate building a classified intelligence pipeline with a non-EU state, co-producing weapons under foreign licence and expanding wartime arms exports — while negotiating accession — tests how much strategic autonomy Brussels will tolerate. The European ministers urging diplomacy over new strikes on Iran and the Balkan governments arming alongside Israel are two faces of a continent no longer speaking with one voice on the Middle East.
The calendar is set: Elbit’s Serbian deliveries run through 2030; Greece’s Achilles Shield is due around summer 2029; and the Serbia–Israel free-trade negotiation will show whether the April 2026 strategic partnership acquires an economic engine or remains a defence affair. The Šimanovci drone plant’s production start — and the destination of its first airframes — will be the clearest signal of how deep the industrial fusion goes.
Watch the flight corridor: 38 Israeli-linked cargo flights to Belgrade in 2025, 17 in the first months of 2026. Whether the 2026 total surpasses last year’s will say more about the war economy’s demands than any communiqué. And watch Ankara: Turkey’s next defence moves in Tirana, Pristina and Zagreb will reveal whether the Balkans are becoming a theatre of Israel–Turkey competition. The diplomacy around Gaza will keep setting the political weather for every one of these deals.
The Western lens: a strategic hedge, scrutinised in public Western reporting — BIRN’s investigations, Haaretz’s and the Jerusalem Post’s analyses — treats the buildup as hard realpolitik: diversification for Israel, modernisation for Serbia, examined in daylight through votes, trade data and flight logs. The moral frame is complicity — whether European weapons sustain wars European diplomats condemn — and the open question is how long an EU candidate can run a parallel defence policy before Brussels asks for an accounting.
The Eastern lens: corridors, balances, and the Turkish shadow From Moscow to Baku to Istanbul, the story reads as balance-of-power engineering. Russia’s defence press covers the Elbit contracts as industrial fact, without the Western moral frame. Azerbaijani analysis maps the chessboard and names the prize: bypassing EU consensus politics.
The Southern lens: what the weapons are for Al Jazeera’s framing — “defence, surveillance, and political backing” — asks what trade data cannot: what the network is for . The Southern reading centres Gaza: Serbian 155-mm shells photographed on pallets at Belgrade airport, bound for Nevatim; a 42-fold export surge in wartime; UN experts’ calls to halt transfers. Arabic-language analysis traces the deeper history — the 2020 Washington Agreement pledges, the embassy question — and sees Israel converting diplomatic recognition into a wartime supply chain.
It is Greece’s planned multilayered air-defence system, built around Israeli technology. Signed on August 31, 2026, the roughly €3 billion ($3.5 billion) deal covers Rafael’s David’s Sling and SPYDER systems, Israel Aerospace Industries’ BARAK MX, ELTA multi-mission radars and a new national command-and-control network. A separate €26 million contract adds Rafael’s Drone Dome counter-drone systems. Greece becomes only the second David’s Sling customer after Finland, with full deployment targeted around summer 2029.
Two Elbit Systems contracts anchor the relationship: about $335 million announced in November 2024 for PULS rocket artillery and Hermes 900 drones, and $1.635 billion announced in August 2025 for long-range missiles, drones, electronic warfare and command-and-control systems — roughly $1.97 billion combined, with deliveries through 2030. Trade flows both ways: Serbian arms exports to Israel jumped from €3 million in 2023 to €114 million in 2025, a 42-fold increase.
Serbia’s defence industry produces 155-mm artillery shells that Israel needs for its wars in Gaza and Lebanon, and Belgrade has positioned itself as a reliable European supplier. Aviation tracking shows 38 Israeli-linked cargo flights to Belgrade in 2025 and 17 more in early 2026. Beyond revenue, the exports buy Belgrade goodwill in Washington and deepen a defence relationship that includes co-production of drones on Serbian soil under Israeli licence.
On April 29, 2026, the Serbian parliament’s Security Board backed a general security agreement on exchanging and protecting classified defence data with Israel, allowing provisional application before formal parliamentary adoption. According to a government document obtained by Balkan Insight, early implementation would let new weapons contracts be signed and enter force sooner — a legal fast lane for the Elbit pipeline and future procurements. The agreement’s detailed terms have not been published.
Yes, and increasingly so. After cyberattacks hit Albanian government systems, Israel supplied protective technologies; the two countries signed a cybersecurity agreement and a defence memorandum in 2023, followed by an Elbit contract for drones and artillery plus a UAV factory in Albania. Prime Minister Edi Rama addressed the Knesset in January 2026, and an October 2026 visit by Israel’s foreign minister produced an expanded cooperation agreement. Israeli tourism to Albania has risen from 7,000 to 100,000 visitors a year.
It redraws two maps at once. For Israel, Balkan partners offer what much of Western Europe no longer does: reliable arms buyers, ammunition suppliers and political allies who will not join embargoes — insurance against isolation as Spain, France and Italy restrict defence ties. For the region, it inserts an Israel–Turkey rivalry into Balkan defence planning and tests how far an EU candidate like Serbia can run a parallel foreign policy.
