When Armenia announced on June 21 that it was officially recognizing Palestine as a state, it cited the "catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza and the ongoing military conflict" there. But Yerevan's calculations began long before the current war in Gaza and have less to do with the conflict in the Middle East and more to do with those closer to home in the Caucasus.
Israel has long been a close ally of Armenia's foe, Azerbaijan. Israeli purchases of Azerbaijani oil fill Baku's coffers, and Israeli weapons were instrumental in Azerbaijan's ability, between 2020 and 2023, to retake the territory it had lost to Armenian forces in the 1990s.
Now, with Israel facing greater international isolation as a result of its war in Gaza, Yerevan saw the opportunity to strike a retaliatory blow.
"It was Israeli policy itself that is to blame for Armenia's adoption of a more pro-Palestinian position," said Richard Giragosian, the head of the Yerevan-based Regional Studies Center think tank.
"And this is due to Israel's unprecedented military support to Azerbaijan, which has only emboldened and empowered Azerbaijan's reliance on the force of arms against Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh," he said, referring to the territory at the heart of the conflict between the Armenians and Azerbaijanis.
'The Enemy Of My Enemy'
In the perceptions of both Baku and Yerevan, the Israel-Palestine conflict has long been refracted through the lens of the wars in the Caucasus.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Azerbaijan and Israel quickly began to build close ties based on the principle of "the enemy of my enemy" -- in this case, Iran -- "is my friend." Baku fears Iran's potential influence over its majority Shi'ite population, while Tehran fears Azerbaijan's potential influence on the large ethnic Azeri population in northern Iran.
"Much like Israel, Azerbaijan perceives Iran as a major, even existential security threat, and the two countries' cooperation flows from this shared recognition," read a leaked 2009 diplomatic cable from the U.S. Embassy in Baku.
Initially, though, the relationship was relatively discreet: The U.S. cable quoted Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev comparing it to "an iceberg, nine-tenths of it is below the surface." Azerbaijan didn't even open an embassy in Israel, mindful of the response of Arab states whose support Baku sought in its struggle with Armenia.
That relationship poisoned Israel-Armenia ties. Israel consistently refused to classify the mass killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire as genocide, out of deference to its Azerbaijani partners (and in hopes of maintaining ties with Turkey). For Armenians, the move was hypocritical for a state founded following the Holocaust. In United Nations votes on Israel and Palestine, Armenia consistently voted on the Palestinian side.
But Armenia never recognized Palestine, a consequence of Yerevan's policy of not recognizing Nagorno-Karabakh, the de facto state set up by ethnic Armenians following the first Karabakh war of the 1990s, as long as negotiations with Azerbaijan over that territory continued. Armenia formally recognizing Karabakh would have been seen by the Azerbaijanis (and others) as an effective abandonment of the negotiations.
The Iceberg Surfaces
Over time, the Israel-Azerbaijan relationship began to emerge from the depths. Highlighting its long-standing and warm relations with Jews both in Azerbaijan and around the world became a staple of the Azerbaijani government's messaging.
Azerbaijan began to rely more and more on Israeli weapons: In the period between 2018 and 2022, Azerbaijan accounted for more than 9 percent of Israel's weapons exports, second in the world behind only India. Israeli weapons, in particular drones, played a critical role in Azerbaijan's 2020 victory in the Second Karabakh War.
That war accelerated the alignment of Azerbaijan with, and Armenia against, Israel. Armenia has grown closer to Iran, which has offered a security guarantee (albeit a vaguely worded one) to Armenia against a potential Azerbaijani attack.
And Armenians' anger at Israel has grown. In an International Republican Institute poll taken in December 2023, Armenians ranked their relations with Israel just ahead of those with Turkey. Yerevan's only synagogue has been attacked four times since October 2023, most recently in early June; Israeli officials have said the attacks are the result of their country's arms deals with Azerbaijan.
The war also led to Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian formally acknowledging that Nagorno-Karabakh was Azerbaijani territory, thus obviating the previous principle of not recognizing controversial territories.
In some ways, Armenia's move means it is joining the mainstream: More than 140 countries have already recognized Palestine, including all of Armenia's neighbors and most other former Soviet republics.
However, a complicating factor is that the minority of countries who don't recognize Palestine are concentrated in Western Europe and North America -- precisely the countries that Armenia is trying to woo as it works to break its former dependence on Russia.
While a recognition may have caused some consternation in Western capitals before, Armenia has been given some cover by the fact that several other European countries -- Ireland, Norway, Slovenia, and Spain -- also have recently recognized Palestine as a state. Those earlier moves "minimized any subsequent Armenian diplomatic vulnerability or isolation," analyst Giragosian said.
The Azerbaijani Response
Armenia's embrace of Palestine has put Azerbaijan on its back foot, making its Middle Eastern balancing act even more difficult to sustain.
Yerevan's recognition drew rare praise from Turkey, one of the Palestinians' most prominent champions and Azerbaijan's closest ally. It also highlighted how Palestine has become another factor in the Azerbaijani-Turkish relationship. Pro-Palestinian protesters in Turkey have targeted the country office of the Azerbaijani state oil company SOCAR.
And following a recent meeting between the leaders of the two countries, the summary of the meeting from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan noted that he had discussed "Israel's aggression in Gaza" with Aliyev. The Azerbaijani summary of the same meeting conspicuously did not mention the Middle East.
The response from official Baku and the pro-government media to Armenia's move to recognize Palestine as a state has been muted.
"Overall, Azerbaijan got itself in quite a precarious position" of keeping up close ties with Israel while navigating the global backlash against Israel's offensive in Gaza, said Shujaat Ahmadzada, an independent analyst based in Baku.
Among ordinary Azerbaijanis, too, Israel's offensive in Gaza appears to have occasioned a shift from a generally pro-Israel position to more sympathy for Palestinians, he said.
While there is no data on the subject, "I have personally witnessed how usually pro-Israeli people in Azerbaijan have openly turned anti-Israeli over the last months," he said. "Hardly anyone supports Israel openly now."
In that sensitive environment, "I think the best mitigation strategy [the Azerbaijani authorities] could come up with is just to stay silent and keep a low profile," Ahmadzada said.
