Azerbaijan and Israel are long-standing strategic partners whose cooperation covers many areas: security, energy, humanitarian sphere, agriculture and others.
At the same time, the relations of the countries reached a new level in 2022, thanks to Azerbaijan’s decision to open an embassy in Tel Aviv.
Israeli Ambassador to Azerbaijan George Deek spoke in an exclusive interview with Report about how the opening of the embassy will contribute to the development of bilateral cooperation and what to expect from 2023:
How will the opening of Azerbaijani embassy in Israel contribute to the development of relations?
The decision to open an embassy of Azerbaijan in Israel was something that was long awaited. We've had diplomatic relations for 30 years and an embassy in Baku since 1993. We were happy to see that the parliament approved it unanimously and then the president signed it into law.
There will be several positive effects of the embassy opening. First of all, it's a message to the people of both Israel and Azerbaijan that our relations are not only strategic and deep, but also public and something to be proud of.
Secondly, it's a message to countries in the Middle East and in this region as well, that both countries do perceive our relations together as beneficial for both countries. We feel that we have important and strategic relation both for Israel and Azerbaijan, whether or not other countries like it or not.
And the third and the biggest contribution this embassy will have is for the Azerbaijani people. Until now, the Azerbaijani people did not have someone in Israel to go and meet the startups, the technology companies and the universities to build the relationships with them.
I'm pretty sure that what has been happening in the region with the Abrahamic accords and the peace agreements between Israel and much of the Arab world and the normalization between Israel and Turkiye contributed to the fact that the embassy is being opened exactly now.
Besides that, I think that we have seen the public opinion in Azerbaijan overwhelmingly supporting the opening the embassy in Israel, especially after the second Karabakh war. We did a public survey before the decision was taken, which showed that 80% of Azerbaijanis regardless the religiosity and geography supported opening an embassy of Azerbaijan in Israel. So, there was ripeness in the Azerbaijani public. I could feel it also in the social media.
Do you think that the opening of the embassy will also contribute to the development of the tourism sector? The numbers of tourists from Azerbaijan in Israel and vice versa have always been high. At what point the tourism sector is now, since it has suffered quite a lot of during COVID-19?
Tourism has been growing between the countries significantly even before the decision to open an embassy was taken and it only stopped because of COVID-19. In 2016 we had 10,000 tourists, 2019 we had already 50,000 - five times higher. And if not COVID-19, we would have passed that.
I think that opening of the embassy will help to increase the tourism sector. Opening of Azerbaijani Tourism Board in Israel last year has already contributed significantly to increase tourism from Israel to Azerbaijan. We don't have the numbers for the last year, but for the first half it seems that we are back to the 2019 numbers, which is an excellent sign that we put COVID-19 behind us in a sense.
I'm very optimistic towards the potential of tourism sector’s development between our countries next year. I'm aware that there is a decision of Azerbaijani airlines (AZAL) to start operating 8 flights per week to Israel starting from the next season. Besides that, Israeli airlines might increase the number of flights. So, imagine we will have more than 10 direct flights every week between Azerbaijan and Israel.
- How is cooperation developing in humanitarian spheres, including in medicine?
It’s amazing how much the people with the business or with the small production company or just with a big heart are engaging in humanitarian projects even without the embassy being involved at all.
Two years ago, immediately after the second Karabakh war, Azerbaijan’s “YASAT” Foundation invited the eye doctors from Israel. I know that the doctors who came to Azerbaijan two years ago have been following up on the patients regularly. And remember all these doctors did the surgeries and the follow-ups on patients completely free. Israeli doctors have operated over 150 Azerbaijani veterans of the war.
And one of those cases was Arif Hajiyev who was injured and lost the sight in one of his eyes in Fuzuli, the place where his grandfather was born. He needed a cornea transplant. A lady in Israel, whose husband passed away just before that, decided to donate his cornea that was brought to Azerbaijan and transplanted in Arif’s eye. Thanks to that lady and her husband who passed away, as well as Israeli doctors, he regained his sight back.
Arif has recently visited Israel accompanied by the US-Azerbaijan friendship group, which is going to do a documentary on him. They took him to Israel to meet with the lady who donated her husband's cornea. He has met with leaders, politicians, mayors and public figures in Israel, as well as the doctor who treated him. And it has truly been a magical journey to see this man who fought in the war and got his sight back.
So, we're very happy that the embassy has also been able to contribute to the documentary that is now in the progress and we hope it will be good.
We also brought here several batches of humanitarian medical equipment as a gift to Azerbaijan. The first one actually was exactly during the Second Karabakh War.
I went to Ganja with medical equipment that was necessary over there to meet with the families who were affected by the bombings a day after this happened and left the day before the next bombing.
In addition, last year we had a delegation of pediatrician coming from Israel to Liv Bona Dea Hospital and other clinics of Azerbaijan to treat dozens of children for free. This delegation was brought here by the Vice-president of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation Leyla Aliyeva.
So, we're always trying to do more and more projects, to cooperate between Ministry of Health or TABIB.
How about cooperation in energy field? Recently you met with Azerbaijan's State Oil Company (SOCAR) President Rovshan Najaf. Can we expect any new joint projects?
It's not a secret that Azerbaijan is a main supplier of Israeli oil. Two years ago, Azerbaijan supplied us with about 30% of our oil, last year almost 40%. So, the central role of Azerbaijan continues and increases in that respect.
We don't import gas from Azerbaijan. And in fact, another avenue of cooperation that we are looking into is how to export our gas to Europe, that is in dire need of this nowadays. There are ideas about liquefying the gas, building a pipe through Egypt, building a pipe through Greece to Italy, there's always the option of building a pipe through Turkiye. And we could connect, for example, to the TAP, TANAP pipelines. We'll see which strategy the new government in Israel will follow.
Renewable energy is also something that we always look into. We have expertise in solar and wind energy. There is a strategic decision by the Azerbaijani president to go greener on energy too. So, if we can contribute into that we will. Israel has not been present in the renewable energy sector of Azerbaijan yet. We're hoping it will happen.
In 2022, there was a decision on opening of the embassy, trade representative, lots of new agreements were signed on governmental and private sector levels. Which sectors have seen the biggest growth and which agreements can be considered milestones?
The year 2022 was becoming more and more important with time. First of all, as you said, Azerbaijan has opened the trade office and then the tourism office. We have seen the revival of the tourism cooperation between Israel and Azerbaijan, bringing it back to the levels of the pre-COVID.
In addition, on the economic field, we have seen several very important agreements on projects being signed. The project between Azerbaijan Investment Company and our own to invest $15 million in startups and technologies to bring Israeli technologies and startups to Azerbaijan.
We've seen an agreement in the water field between Israeli Mekorot and Azerbaijan's Amelioration and Water Farm Company, a project to build a strategic plant in the water sector of Azerbaijan.
We have seen Minister of Digital Development and Transportation Rashad Nabiyev visited Israel and signed an agreement with the Technion to open a school for cyber security studies right here in Azerbaijan, hold trainings in Baku. We hope it will be open in the next few weeks or a couple of months. These are all extremely important projects that we have been working on.
At the same time, there were high level visits from Israel as well. Here we had three ministers from Israel visit in the space of less than two months, Minister of Tourism, of Agriculture and of Finance and, of course, Israeli Minister of Defense also visited here last October, which came as a surprise to a lot of people. But that's how we do it.
But the most important achievement for us is the decision to open the embassy of Azerbaijan in Israel.
So yeah, it has been a very, very good year for our relations. Azerbaijan is living in an unstable neighborhood and you have to stick to your friends and partners when in times of change. So, this also is something that is bringing our countries closer together.
What will be the priorities of cooperation for this year? Are there any plans to sign more new agreements?
Now we are planning what projects we want to hold next year and we have a lot of new surprises for 2023. We are planning to also hold high level visits. But the most important event of 2023 is going to be the official opening of Azerbaijani embassy in Israel.
We are hoping to see great cooperation in the business field.
We have seen the decision by Azerbaijan Investment Company to sign an agreement with Israeli IDE Technologies company planned for signing in 2023 and to build the first desalinization plant on the Caspian Sea.
The project is going to help desalinate hundreds of thousands of cubic tons of water every day for Azerbaijan. Thus, we really look forward in 2023 to finalize it.
We want to see tourism breaking records and with the number of flights and infrastructure, we believe it will happen in 2023.
We want to see more cultural exchanges, more musical shows here from Israel, Israeli movies in Azerbaijan.
Israel supported Azerbaijan a lot in the Second Karabakh War and we see the same support even today, when Karabakh is being rebuilt. What’s Israel’s presence in Karabakh today?
Right now, Karabakh is a huge project for Azerbaijan. I've been there and saw the size of destructions. There's really nothing to start with. It will take many years and a lot of effort to rebuild that.
We have expressed the readiness of our companies and our capabilities to be used in Karabakh before and we do it now.
There's an Israeli company that has built a dairy farm in Aghali smart village of the Zangilan district. Other projects that we are involved or discussing to participate in there are in the field of water management, renewable energy, security and agriculture. We have presented also some possibilities to cooperate on smart cities and we're waiting to see the reaction.
We tell the counterparts from Azerbaijan “you tell us where you need us, and we will be there.”
Is Israel ready to assist the normalization between Armenia and Azerbaijan?
We are following closely the developments, peace process and negotiations between Azerbaijan and Armenia, and our position has and always been the same. We support Azerbaijan's territorial integrity. And we are very hopeful that at the end, the intentions of both countries to sign a peace treaty that will bring stability and prosperity and hope to the people of Azerbaijan and the people of Armenia will come true. We fully support all the peaceful attempts.
We have diplomatic relations with Armenia as well. Armenia has an embassy in Israel. So, we have normal relations with Armenia, but I think everyone knows that our relationship with Azerbaijan is special, strategic and deep. It will continue this way.
We have made it clear to Armenia, to other countries, to NGO's and people that we have and we want to have good, normal relations with Armenia and that the relations with Azerbaijan are not against any other third country. These are just our friend and special relations with Azerbaijan. If people don't accept it, then it's their decision, not ours.
Iran-Azerbaijan relations got really challenging recently...
Iran is perhaps the main source of instability and wars in the Middle East, in the South Caucasus and beyond. We have seen Iran using their proxies to commit terrorist attacks everywhere from Argentina to Bulgaria and Cyprus. So, I'm not surprised they're trying to meddle in the South Caucasus as well. The countries of this region are vigilant and they understand that. Look at every single country where Iran is involved: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen. Wherever they are, they bring chaos, destruction, falling apart economy. There's a huge danger coming from Iran.
But Iran is not an Israeli problem. Iran is not an Azerbaijani problem. Iran is a global problem and therefore the entire world has to face Iran and to stop it. When we see what is happening inside Iran today, long before we look at what they do in this region we see that the greatest victim of the Iranian regime are the people of Iran.
Everyone is suffering from the Iranian regime, their policies against women, against freedom, against freedom of expression and freedom of labor. And we have seen them executing. They execute more people than any other country per capita. They are torturing people in Evin prison on a daily basis. They are hanging people only for expressing sentiment, supporting freedom. All these people want is to be free, to live normal lives that every Azerbaijani and every Israeli has. Not to be rich, but to be free. That's something, that I think, every human being deserves and we all have to support the Iranian people when they're calling for very, very basic human rights, especially when the crackdown by the regime has been so brutal, so cruel.
So, the fact that a woman gets lashes and then gets killed because she’s not wearing a headscarf is inconceivable and therefore Iran represents an evil that is oppressing the Iranian people first and then creating all these problems around the world.