Israel’s Delicate Dance: Why Jerusalem Still Won’t Fully Back Ukraine

The recent controversy over allegedly stolen Ukrainian grain transiting through Israel has reignited the question: Where does Israel actually stand on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?

For more than three years, Israel has maintained a posture that satisfies no one, nominally supportive of Ukraine’s territorial integrity while refusing the military cooperation Kyiv desperately wants. The original justification centered on operational necessity: The presence of Russian forces in Syria meant Israel needed to coordinate with them for IAF strikes on Iranian assets. But with the Assad regime’s collapse and Russia’s diminished Syrian footprint, that explanation has worn thin.

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Blaise Misztal, vice president for policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), framed the relationship as one of unrealized potential between natural partners.

“Israel and Ukraine clearly share significant common interests,” Misztal told JNS. “Foremost among them, they have both been the victims of relentless aerial attack and have each developed impressive technologies to defend against them.”

The complementarity is striking. “Those technologies are largely complementary: Whereas Israel has impressive anti-missile defenses, it has found itself relatively more vulnerable to drones; for Ukraine the opposite is true,” Misztal added.

“A major obstacle still remains to closer cooperation between what should be two natural partners. Namely, Russia,” Misztal explained. “While it is true that the collapse of the Assad regime and Russia’s withdrawal from Syria removed the major reason for Israel’s early reticence to back Ukraine, Russia still remains a regional actor whom Israel is clearly being careful not to antagonize.”

Evidence of this caution surfaced recently in one of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s television appearances.

“Prime Minister Netanyahu’s non-answers on 60 Minutes to questions about Russian support for Iran during the war made clear that Israel believes that the best way to minimize Moscow’s involvement is to avoid talking about it,” Misztal said.

Misztal said he sees one development that could break the impasse.

“For both Israel and Ukraine, therefore, the best thing that could happen would be the fall of the Islamic Republic and the severing of Russia’s last major partner in the Middle East. That could pave the way to greater cooperation between Kyiv and Jerusalem without the risk of strategic fallout for Israel.”

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Read the original article in JNS.