Valdai Club

The Israeli justifications for the timing of the operation against Iran have ranged from the growing nuclear threat to the weakening of the Islamic Republic’s governing system by preceding protests. However, Benjamin Netanyahu’s government—balancing on the brink of early elections—had at least one domestic political factor that pushed it towards escalation at the end of February this year.

The special US-Israeli relationship that Benjamin Netanyahu’s government had counted on under the Donald Trump administration was, at first glance, not reflected in the updated US National Security Strategy. In reality, however, Washington appears to have proposed that its key Middle Eastern ally refocus its cooperation from geopolitical factors to geo-economic ones. However, Israel’s willingness to build cooperation in accordance with such a model remains questionable, writes Elizaveta Yakimova.

The government of Benjamin Netanyahu is facing a threat to economic relations with three partners at once - the US, the EU and Great Britain. Despite their different measures of influence on Israel, they are united by their focus on solving Western, rather than Middle Eastern problems, while demonstrating the critical level of Israeli dependence on Europe and the US, which hinders West Jerusalem’s search for foreign trade alternatives.

On March 25, Israel’s legislature, the Knesset, approved the country’s budget for the current year, preventing the collapse of Benjamin Netanyahu's government. At the same time, the ratio of military to civilian spending, the attraction of funds from the Israeli Citizens Fund and a number of accompanying factors have turned the document not only into the main financial plan, but also a kind of political plan for the future.

Еhe ideas voiced by Donald Trump after his first meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu may indicate the intention of the American administration to base the regional strategy on the principles of economic peace, extending this mechanism not only to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, but also to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Two incidents involving the detonation of communication devices, the liquidation of the Hezbollah Secretary General, and the IDF's operation Northern Arrows most aptly reflect the situation on the Lebanese-Israeli border over a period of just over a month. Against this background, the "historic" agreement on the demarcation of the maritime border, signed two years ago and designed to pave the way for reconciliation between the two warring states, has remained in the shadows.

For political and economic reasons, both the format of Israel’s economic relations with the PNA and the specific tax collection system need to be transformed, which, at least in some of the Palestinian territories, is entirely possible to implement during the post-war reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, taking into account previously developed proposals, Elizaveta Yakimova writes.

If the situation does not improve in the short term, then measures of economic influence, in contrast to the verbal critical rhetoric that the President of Turkey most often used previously, could cause significant damage to bilateral relations, disrupting direct non-political contacts, which previously made it possible to continue interacting in times of crisis, writes Elizaveta Yakimova.

In recent years, sanctions have become an extremely common tool of Washington’s foreign policy, which has more or less left Israel untouched, as it remains the main Middle Eastern ally of the United States. Since the beginning of this year, there has been a change in both this trend and the nature of American restrictions, whose ultimate goals have been revealed in a new way.

The issue of Israel joining BRICS is irrelevant, both from a procedural point of view and in the context of the interests of each of the parties, Elizaveta Yakimova writes. However, the expansion of the association to the Middle East and attempts to develop a consolidated position on the problems of the region play the role of altering the positioning of BRICS in Israel’s foreign policy coordinates.