Peres' Visit to Russia and Israel-Russia Relations

The two presidents discussed the issues such as Iran's nuclear work, Israel-Palestine conflict, International Conference on the Middle East to be held in Moscow and the course of the relations between the two countries. It will be useful to evaluate the Israel-Russia relations in brief before the evaluation of the negotiations and the result.

Although Moscow has been following a policy based on Arab countries in the Middle East since the period of the USSR, today it's seen that Russia and Israel need each other in many issues. On the other hand, the biggest population speaking Russian lives in Israel apart from the old Soviet republics. Over one million former USSR citizens living in Israel help develop the cultural relations and tourism between the two countries. Russia has stated that they want to carry out joint projects on the subject of military technology with Israel after the immigration of the former USSR citizens of Jewish origin to Israel including scientists and engineers.

Israel also intends to develop the relations with Moscow. On the one hand, Israel wants the Russian citizens of Jewish origin to immigrate to Israel. On the other hand, Israel tries to prevent Moscow from selling weapons to Arab countries and at least wants Russia to follow a more objective policy within the framework of the developments in the Middle East. It's extremely important for Israel to develop commercial relations with Russia.

In addition to this, the relations between Israel and Russia have been fluctuating for the last twenty years. The diplomatic relations between Russia and Israel suspended in 1967 could be reestablished in 1991. Russia-Israel relations have started to develop right after the Benjamin Netanyahu's victory in the elections in May 1996. Israel opened a 50 million-dollar credit for Russia which was in crisis at that time and started to be interested in Russian gas.  However, the relations between the two countries began to go bad again after Russia sold missiles to Iran. What's more, soon after Yevgeny Primakov, who wants to develop good relations with Arab countries, became the foreign minister, Moscow started to criticize Israel's policy concerning Palestine.

The fluctuations in the relations between Russia and Israel continued also during Vladimir Putin's term. Vladimir Putin dealt with Chechnya problem during his first years of presidency and in fact this affected Russia-Israel relations positively. A Russian diplomat explained that Israel played an important role in eliminating the "false ideas" of the Occident about the Russian policy concerning Chechnya. Russia paid its "debt" to Israel before too long. Unlike Yeltsin, Putin accused not only Israel but also Palestine in the Palestine conflict and called upon the two sides to solve the problem and start the negotiations.

Vladimir Putin's visit to Israel within the context of the Middle East trip between the dates of 26-29 August in 2005 played an important role in breaking the ice between Russia and Israel. The President of Israel Moshe Katsav and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at that time described Putin's visit as "historical". For, neither the Soviet leaders nor the Russian Tsars had set foot on the "sacred territories" before. Although Israeli authorities explained their concerns over the Moscow's arms sale to Arab countries and the increasing Jewish hostility in Russia day by day, let alone the elimination of those concerns, Putin's visit almost caused a diplomatic crisis after he refused to wear a kippah during his visit to the "Wailing Wall". For both of the countries, the most important consequence of the visit was the decision to develop the commercial relations.

The most important consequence of the last Medvedev-Peres meeting has been the agreement on the development of commercial relations. The planning of rising the trade volume to 5 million dollars until 2010 means that Russia and Israel try to develop the relations. The cooperation on energy between the two countries especially in recent years shows that they will realize those objectives. Israel is largely dependent on Russian oil. Furthermore, they negotiate over elongating the Blue Stream Natural Gas Pipeline to Israel.

Another issue that has been brought to agenda in the meeting has been the developments in the region. As you know, recently, Israeli authorities have made comments about the possible bombarding of Iran's nuclear centrals in response to the Iran's threats of destroying Israel. According to Peres, Iran is the only country which dares to destroy a UN member country among many others. Medvedev, on the other hand, emphasized that the tension between Israel and Iran has to be resolved by diplomatic means. Russia exhibits the same attitude towards the Israel-Palestine conflict. In general, Moscow follows a policy in favor of resolving all the problems in the Middle East by means of diplomacy and makes mediation attempts since Russia is one of the rare countries still in touch with all the states in the region. The International Conference on the Middle East to be organized by the Russian authorities in the future is one of those attempts.

Moreover, the two leaders have also agreed on the correct evaluation of the developments during and after the Second World War. While Medvedev has underlined the role of the USSR in the defeat of the Nazis during the Second World War, Peres have wanted the countries rejecting the Jewish genocide to look over the subject again. The leaders of the both countries have agreed to fight against the countries denying or distorting the historical facts.

Although the relations between Russia and Israel have developed more in the last years, it's a real fact that the relations aren't at the level desired by Jewish Russians. The milieus against Israel in Russia have an important part in slowing down the development of those relations. The FSB authorities supporting the rapprochement with Arab countries like in the USSR period, the Russian Foreign Affairs authorities in favor of developing the relations with Arab countries, communists and nationalists against Jews, the Russian "Rosoboroneksport" company selling weapons to Arab countries and the Union of Muslims of Russia representing 20 million Muslims are against Moscow's rapprochement with Israel.

»» Center for Middle Eastern Strategic Studies (ORSAM)