Why did Israel's new foreign minister embrace the Kurdish people? - analysis

Israel’s new foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, mentioned the Kurdish people in his first speech upon taking office on Sunday.

“The Kurdish people are a great nation, one of the largest nations without political independence,” he said at a ceremony marking the handover of the Foreign Ministry from outgoing foreign minister Israel Katz to Sa’ar.

Israel has enjoyed warm relations with the Kurdish people in the region since the early years of its independence. Both Jews and Kurds are minorities in the region and have often faced persecution at the hands of the same enemies.

For instance, Jews suffered persecution at the hands of Arab nationalists and extremists, many of whom also targeted Kurds, seeking to deny them independence and rights in Iraq, Iran, and Syria.

In Iraq, the regime of Saddam Hussein gassed Kurds and committed a genocide against them. It also led the region in anti-Israel extremism. In Syria, the regime of Hafez Assad denied many Kurds rights and citizenship and was also at the forefront of opposing Israel. In Iran, the regime under the ayatollahs crushed Kurdish dissidents.

Kurdish roots

Turkey has been a more complex story. Israel and Turkey have enjoyed relations since the 1950s, and it is only more recently that Ankara has become extremely hostile to Israel. Turkey has historically suppressed the Kurds, even trying to deny their existence, ban their language, and remove Kurdish geographical names.

Sa’ar described how the Kurds in the Middle East are today divided into four countries. The Kurdish regions in Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran are called Bakur, Basur, Rojava, and Rojhilat, respectively.

In Syria and Iraq, the Kurds enjoy autonomy, Sa’ar said. In Syria, they live in an eastern region that is mostly controlled by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces. This autonomous region has been attacked frequently by Turkey.

In addition, Turkey invaded the Kurdish area of Afrin in 2018 and ethnically cleansed 160,000 Kurds from the small mountainous area, he said, adding that the Kurds in eastern Syria have a type of de facto autonomy.

The autonomous Kurdistan Region of Iraq enjoys rights under the Iraqi constitution, Sa’ar said.

Kurds are “a victim of oppression and aggression from Iran and Turkey,” he said. “We need to reach out to them and strengthen our ties with them. This has both political and security aspects. I also follow the Druze minority in the neighboring countries, in Syria and Lebanon, and we have a brave alliance with the Druze citizens of Israel.”

Sa’ar made his remarks within the context of Israel’s desire to follow developments in the region and expand the “circle of peace and normalization.”

Israel has had peace with Turkey since the first years of independence, and it achieved peace with Egypt in the 1980s and Jordan in the 1990s.

In 2020, the Abraham Accords brought peace with the UAE and Bahrain, as well as normalization with Morocco, and it appeared to open doors to Sudan, Chad, and other states. This was stalled, in part, by Iran’s machinations and the October 7 massacre.

Talk of normalization with Saudi Arabia has gone on for half a decade. Riyadh has demands regarding the Palestinians, and it wants to see Israel make positive gestures.

“I hope we will succeed with Saudi Arabia and other countries,” Sa’ar said. “We have not given up on that. But we also need to carefully examine the area around us and build strong alliances, and I want to emphasize other minorities in the space in which we live.”

He reached out to Kurds and Druze within the context of discussing minorities. Although Israel is in a difficult war now on several fronts, there are many achievements against the Iranian axis, and the results of the war will be significant for Israel’s future in the region, he said.

Israel’s outreach to minorities in the region has a long history. For many years, Israel pursued relations with countries on the periphery of the Arab world, including in the 1950s, when the Arab states were the most hostile to Israel.

In those days, Arab nationalism led by Gamal Abdel Nasser helped build Egypt into an impressive state and also invited Soviet arms into Cairo. The Assad regime did the same. It was not until after 1973 that peace with Egypt could be pursued.

Israel worked with the Iranians prior to the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Israel and Turkey were friends. Iran and Turkey are both non-Arab states, and modern Turkey is specifically rooted in Turkish nationalism.

Early Zionist leaders had studied in Istanbul and were familiar with the Young Turks and Turkish nationalism, which likely inspired some of their own views on the pathways to a Jewish state.

Meanwhile, Israel also reached out to countries in Asia and Africa from the 1950s until today. This resulted in slow and steady diplomatic successes to end its early isolation. Setbacks occurred, however, and this left Israel often scrambling to find new friends in a changing region.

For instance, the Islamic Revolution ended Israel-Iran ties. Israel had worked on ties with the Kurds in Iraq, and those ties bore fruit. Many Kurds I have spoken to over the years in northern Iraq speak of the days in the 1960s and 1970s when they sought and received clandestine support from Israel during the Cold War.

The Kurds were abandoned many times, but they felt Israel was a dear and true friend. Kurds in Syria I have spoken with described how they felt suppressed by the Assad regime but knew that Israel was a country they could look up to.

Israel’s policy of outreach toward minorities in the region has not always worked well. Outreach to the Maronites and other Christians during the Lebanese civil war didn’t lead to peace in Lebanon. Instead, Israel fought for years in southern Lebanon, and Hezbollah rose with Iranian support, claiming to “resist” Israel.

The present state of Lebanon and Hezbollah’s stranglehold on the country has roots in that era. Similarly, Israel’s close ties to the Kurds have been used by enemies to fight Kurdish independence.

During the Kurdistan Region’s independence referendum in 2017, some Kurds flew Israeli flags in places such as Dohuk and Erbil. This caught on in the Iranian and Turkish media, fueling anti-Kurdish sentiment in Tehran and Ankara. Both states opposed the referendum, claiming an independent Kurdish would be a “second Israel.”

In general, the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and their ideologies of Islamist extremism have opposed Israel and Kurds and often push antisemitic and anti-Kurdish propaganda.

Many Kurds say they have no friends but the mountains, being that the 20 million Kurds of the region often live in more mountainous areas. Sa’ar’s speech was intended to show that they also have friends in Israel.