JERUSALEM – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long relied on his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, using it to act as a go-between for the Kremlin and Washington, and to help secure Israel’s northern border with Syria.
What a difference 18 months makes.
Netanyahu returned to power in late December amid expectations that he would turn Israel in the direction of Russia. Instead, he has beefed up his country’s support for kyiv under pressure from Israel’s most important ally, the United States. He now has to weigh alienating Putin by providing defensive weapons to Ukraine, a move he has yet to agree to and which Russia has already made clear would be a red line.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy publicly called on Israel for its advanced David’s Sling system during his virtual address to the Munich Security Conference on February 17, expressing confidence that Israel would eventually agree.
«We don’t have Israel’s David’s Sling yet, but I think it’s only temporary,» Zelensky said.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba also outlined his country’s demands when he met his Israeli counterpart Eli Cohen in kyiv on February 16.
«Israel is fully aware of the list of our military and defensive requests that we have provided… to this government, and we will be waiting for some decisions to be made,» he said. “We are talking about the provision of the Ukrainian skies.”
Cohen, who was the first high-level Israeli official to visit Ukraine since the start of the war, arrived in Kiev on a solidarity trip that included a meeting with Zelenskyy, but left without promising defensive military aid.
Top Israeli lawmakers have already called on Netanyahu to provide Ukraine with anti-drone and anti-missile systems.
Yuli Edelstein, who heads the country’s parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defense and is a member of Netanyahu’s Likud Party, traveled to Ukraine and met with Zelenskyy on February 20, along with opposition lawmaker Ze’ev Elkin with a message that it was markedly different from Cohen’s.
They promised Zelenskyy to do everything possible to help ensure that Israel sends defensive weapons.
“Israel can and must do much more than it has done so far,” they said in a statement after the meeting. «We must stop being afraid and take an active and unequivocal position in accordance with basic moral values, as would be expected from any Western country.»
automatic sympathy
Elkin and Edelstein immigrated to Israel from the Ukraine decades ago and say they have an automatic sympathy for its citizens under fire. But they also add that they have broken ranks with their government, both from a moral and a political position, given Russia’s growing military alliance with Iran, a country that has said it wants to see Israel wiped off the map.
Tehran has already shown its enmity with Kiev by providing Russia with battlefield weapons such as armed drones, which Moscow has used against Ukraine, a move that has automatically tightened ties between Netanyahu and Zelenskyy.
So, the strengthening of the Russian-Iranian alliance threatens the security of not only Ukraine, but also Israel, Edelstein and Elkin said, explaining that both countries were now on the same side when it came to defending their citizens against Iran.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, while in Jerusalem in late January, pointed to Russia’s growing dependence on Iran to supply weapons for the war and explicitly demanded that Israel increase its support for Kiev.
“Tehran’s deepening ties with Moscow and the sophisticated weaponry they are exchanging to enable mutual aggression are among the many reasons why we have raised with Israel the importance of providing support for all of Ukraine’s needs: humanitarian, economic and security. while defending her people against Russia’s brutal war of aggression,” Blinken told reporters.
In a sign of a possible concession to Washington, Netanyahu indicated in an interview to CNN which aired immediately after Blinken’s visit that he was considering Ukraine’s longstanding request to provide anti-drone and anti-missile technology.
“I am certainly looking into it,” Netanyahu said. In an unusually forceful statement, he also indicated that Israel was working covertly to prevent Iranian-made weapons from reaching Russia, with its regional policy of attacking Iranian targets related to the production or flow of weapons. Israel is «taking action against the development of certain weapons that Iran has and Iran invariably exports,» he said.
An example of such action was likely on display this month when Damascus blamed Israel for a rocket attack on a meeting of Syrian and Iranian technical experts on drone manufacturing. according to Reuters.
Avoid a Russo-Israeli conflict
Moscow has focused on Israel’s public actions rather than covert ones. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned this month that Israel’s supply of defensive military equipment to Ukraine would lead to an «escalation of the crisis.»
Countries that «supply weapons must understand that we will consider these weapons as legitimate targets.» she saidand added that this position «is well known to all.»
Netanyahu told NBC News in December that he wanted to avoid a Russo-Israeli war. The question of whether Netanyahu, who despite his hawkish reputation is historically reluctant to use the country’s full military might, should put Israel on a potential collision course with Russia has been a growing debate in Israel.
Israel’s well-understood beneficial relationship with Russia, a relationship that has been personalized by Netanyahu’s strong ties to Putin, makes many doubt Netanyahu would turn fully to Ukraine.
On the security front, Russia has been a partner of Netanyahu in neighboring Syria, where he is one of President Bashar al-Assad’s most important military backers. An agreement with Israel has made it possible for the Israeli military to carry out air raids against Iran-linked targets there.
“We are in a very different situation than in Europe and the United States,” when it comes to Russia, said political science professor Reuven Hazan of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. «Israeli prime ministers know the relevance of an open dialogue with Russia when it comes to our national security.»
Zvi Magen, who served first as Israel’s ambassador to Ukraine and then to Russia in the 1990s, said that if Israel gave Ukraine weapons, especially those that would change the balance of the conflict, it would be «going to war with Russia.» ”. ”
There is a danger, Hazan said, that Russia could close the airspace over Syria, becoming a «land bridge» for the advanced weapons that Iran is trying to send to Hezbollah in Lebanon, he said.
Israel has also been concerned about the impact on Russia’s Jewish community of about 83,000 in case ties between the two nations were broken.
But these and other considerations appear to be giving way to the threat posed by Iran.