Who knows if it has anything to do with the fact that Vladimir Putin is responsible for the rockets that have been targeting schools, hospitals and civilian homes in Ukraine for twenty months. But the Russian president let nine days pass after the Hamas attack on October 7 before calling Benjamin Netanyahu to offer his condolences.
Unashamed, Putin expressed to the Israeli prime minister his “rejection of any action that victimizes the civilian population.” Even he could not believe his stroke of luck: from that moment on, the war in the Middle East would distract the people of the West from the one he himself had unleashed.
Volodymyr Zelensky immediately called Netanyahu instead. The Ukrainian president, who is Jewish, realizes that competing with Israel for American attention would be disastrous for him. Zelensky suggested visiting Israel to show solidarity. The answer, according to various Israeli media, was short: “Not now.” The leaders of the USA, Italy, France or Great Britain were immediately greeted; But Netanyahu didn’t find time for the man from Kiev.
The two conflicts on the northeastern and southeastern borders of the European Union partly reflect rifts along the same fault lines in the international system. But they cannot easily be superimposed. They don’t fall into the same patterns: not even when the Russian government received a Hamas delegation this week; Not even if the same terrorist organization announced yesterday that it could free the Israeli hostages with Russian passports.
The relationship between the Kremlin and Israel is more nuanced than it appears from a European perspective. The clue, long before October 7, lies in the fact that Netanyahu leads the world’s only advanced democracy that has not imposed sanctions on Russia following its aggression against Ukraine. Israel has never supplied Kiev with weapons. Various factors continue to push the Jewish state to maintain an open channel with Putin, despite his arms deal with Iran and his frightening equivocation toward Hamas.
The 900,000 Israelis of Russian origin certainly count, a tenth of the Israeli population. Above all, Moscow has controlled large areas of Syria for years and now plays a crucial role in preventing attacks on Israel from factions linked to Tehran. In the future, after the war in Gaza, the intervention of an international contingent with a mandate from the United Nations and soldiers from Islamic countries may be necessary: then a consensus or at least an abstention from Moscow in the Security Council would be necessary, giving the Kremlin an opportunity to get back into the fold diplomatic games in the Glass Palace.
Still, for now, Putin is interested in maintaining ties with Hamas and Islamic extremism. On the one hand, Islam is the second religion in Russia, especially in the unstable Caucasus; On the other hand, his ambivalence towards Gaza strengthens him in all Muslim countries: from Iran to Saudi Arabia to Tunisia and Algeria.
While it remains impossible to predict who will actually lose in the war unleashed by Hamas, unfortunately a winner is currently emerging. And he has the menacing features of Vladimir Putin. First, because the conflict in the Middle East is taking away from Ukraine, in addition to the attention of Western governments, something more concrete: tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of American ammunition. Kiev needs 350,000 155mm pieces per month, Europe manages to produce 650,000 per year.
And now many of those Americans are stranded on aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean and at bases in the Middle East. Then there is “a gift for Moscow’s propaganda,” notes Alexander Gabuev, a Russian dissident in exile and director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. The West sanctions the Kremlin for bombing civilians, while Israel does the same, but few protest. How hypocritical is all this?