After two years, the active phase of Israel’s war on Gaza - widely recognized as a genocide - ended with a fragile ceasefire on October 10. The genocide left at least 67,000 Palestinians dead, 169,000 wounded, and nearly 2 million displaced. Though geographically distant, the South Caucasus states felt the war’s reverberations due to their intricate ties to the region and their transregional connections through Iran and Turkey, which together bridge the Middle East and the Caucasus.
Officially, among the South Caucasus states, Georgia assumed the most pronounced pro-Israeli stance. On October 7, 2023, the Georgian Foreign Ministry condemned the “horrific terrorist attack on the State of Israel” and expressed solidarity with Tel Aviv. President Salome Zourabichvili echoed this position, declaring Tbilisi’s “full solidarity with Israel in these difficult moments.” In subsequent months, Georgia abstained from UN General Assembly resolutions on Gaza, in contrast to Azerbaijan and Armenia.
It is important to note that Georgia has recently pursued closer ties with non-Western actors such as Russia, China, and Iran, a shift shaped in part by its cooling relations with its Western partners. Yet despite this perceived geopolitical drift, Georgia’s stance on the Gaza genocide remained far more aligned with mainstream Western positions than its broader foreign-policy outreach might suggest. This paradox reflects Tbilisi’s growing estrangement from the liberal-centrist bloc in Brussels and Washington, which it labels the “Global War Party,” and its simultaneous alignment with right-conservative “sovereigntist” forces such as Hungary and segments of the U.S. Republican Party. Support for Israel functions here as a strategic bridge to both blocs—one Georgia doesn’t want to alienate.
This crude pragmatic calculus was underscored by the visit of Israel’s extremist National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir on August 24, 2025. Despite the extensive criticism and sanctions Ben-Gvir faced even among Israel’s Western allies, such as the UK, Canada, and Australia, he became the first senior Israeli official to visit Tbilisi amid the genocide. He used the visit to declare that “Israel is defeating Iran and Hezbollah and fighting Hamas in Gaza,” circulated images of alleged Hamas misuse of humanitarian aid, and urged Georgian officials to advocate for the release of Israeli captives. Georgia’s Interior Minister reciprocated with an official visit to Israel in October.
Armenia, by contrast, adopted a more neutral stance. On October 7, its Foreign Ministry expressed “shock at the violence between the Palestinians and Israel and targeting of the civilian population,” calling for an immediate halt to the fighting. In the months that followed, Yerevan supported UN General Assembly resolutions demanding a ceasefire in Gaza. Notably, in June 2024, Armenia became the last South Caucasus state to recognize the State of Palestine—a step praised by the Palestinian Presidency as a “courageous and significant decision.” Israel responded by summoning the Armenian ambassador for a “harsh reprimand conversation” and warning of “serious long-term consequences.”
However, even as the war came to be widely recognized as a genocide, Yerevan avoided explicit condemnation of Israel. Instead, it emphasized restraint, civilian protection, and renewed international efforts toward a two-state solution. The government also remained silent about escalating settler harassment against Armenian Christians in Jerusalem’s historic Armenian Quarter, even signaling a willingness to “turn the page” in bilateral relations after recalling its ambassador in 2020 over Israeli arms transfers to Baku.
This caution reflects Armenia’s ongoing reorientation from Russia toward the West, leaving little appetite to antagonize Washington, Brussels, or Israel. From Yerevan’s perspective, adopting a strongly pro-Palestinian stance could jeopardize these fragile ties, particularly given the Israel-friendly tendencies within Western policymaking circles.
Azerbaijan, meanwhile, issued a carefully calibrated response on October 7, condemning violence against civilians on both sides and offering condolences to Israelis and Palestinians alike. In UN General Assembly votes, Baku supported calls for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
Yet, despite routinely framing the Karabakh conflict as an Islamic cause within the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), Baku distanced itself from the Gaza genocide in practice. It offered no material or diplomatic follow-through and refrained from criticizing Israel’s actions or calling for accountability. Instead, it deepened bilateral ties—including increasing oil exports that supply roughly 40 percent of Israel’s oil needs. By the first half of 2025, Israel had become the largest foreign destination for Azerbaijani investment, with flows reaching USD 542 million. Notably, Azerbaijani oil shipments to Israel via Turkey triggered widespread protests across Turkish cities, where demonstrators broke the main door of Azerbaijani State Oil Company’s (SOCAR) Istanbul office and threw red paint on the walls. Protesters carried banners with slogans like “Two States, One Betrayal,” referencing the famed motto “One Nation, Two States” that underpins Ankara-Baku ties.
In November 2024 and in July 2025, respectively, Israeli President Isaac Herzog and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—wanted by the ICC for war crimes and crimes against humanity—were formally invited to Baku. Although neither visit materialized, the invitations themselves illustrate Baku’s willingness to deepen symbolic ties with Israel even amid the genocide.
For years, Azerbaijan kept its relationship with Israel discreet to preserve solidarity within the OIC and secure support from Muslim-majority states regarding the Karabakh conflict. But after restoring its sovereignty over Karabakh in the 2020 and 2023 wars, Baku no longer perceives strong incentives for restraint. Instead, it has embraced an openly transactional partnership with Israel as part of a broader strategy to expand its international leverage. In doing so, it highlights both the limits of normative solidarity within the OIC and the ways in which authoritarian resilience in the post-Soviet region is increasingly intertwined with global security architectures and external patronage.
Viewed comparatively, three distinct patterns are clear: Georgia’s instrumentalization of the conflict as a marker of Western alignment, Armenia’s cautious geopolitical calculus, and Azerbaijan’s balancing of symbolic pro-Palestinianism with strategic pro-Israelism under authoritarian constraints. These dynamics show that the region’s responses are shaped far more by domestic political economies, regime logics, and identity narratives, than by the specifics of Israel’s actions in Gaza.
What is revealed by through this comparison is a region where rhetorical gestures diverge sharply from policy behavior. Despite their differing alignments and internal politics, none of the South Caucasus states have taken substantive steps in solidarity with the Palestinians—such as downgrading ties with Israel, pursuing legal accountability, or supporting boycott initiatives. Even low-cost symbolic moves, like walking out during Benjamin Netanyahu’s UN General Assembly speech, have been largely absent.
The explicit takeaway is that Gaza lies far outside the foreign-policy priorities of the South Caucasus states. For Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, moral compromise is a price they are willing to pay for the political and strategic dividends of partnership with Israel.