Baku boasts of pressuring Israel to abandon Armenian genocide recognition

Azerbaijan has publicly claimed credit for pressuring Israel into abandoning a parliamentary vote to recognise the Armenian genocide, months after the Israeli cabinet unanimously approved it as a "moral duty".

Hikmet Hajiyev, foreign policy adviser to Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev, told the Turkish broadcaster Haber Global that Baku had mounted an immediate diplomatic campaign on Aliyevs instructions once the Israeli move became known, and that it had worked.

"As soon as this issue arose, Azerbaijan, on the instructions of Mr. President [Aliyev], began intensive diplomatic efforts. We also conveyed our messages to the Israeli side that the adoption of such a decision would, first of all, be unfair, and would not reflect historical reality, adding that we did not consider its adoption advisable," Hajiyev said.

"The positive side is that the Israeli side took Azerbaijans messages seriously. We believe that further progress on this issue has been prevented," he added.

Hajiyev described Turkish interests as an unchanging "red line" for Baku, adding: "Wherever Turkey is not present, Azerbaijan is present, and wherever Azerbaijan is not present, Turkey is present."

The Israeli cabinet had unanimously approved recognition on 28 June, on a proposal from the foreign minister Gideon Saar, who told the cabinet that "it is never too late to do the right thing" and described recognition as a moral duty. The resolution stated that Israel recognised the genocide committed against the Armenian people in the final years of the Ottoman Empire on the basis of moral and historical duty, and called for the condemnation of denial, minimisation or distortion of the historical truth.

Its explanatory notes set out how the genocide began in April 1915 with the arrest, deportation and killing of Armenian intellectuals and leaders in Constantinople, before Ottoman authorities systematically targeted the wider Armenian population, working men to death in forced labour and driving women, children and the elderly on death marches towards the Syrian desert. Around 1.5 million Armenians were killed and a centuries-old cultural heritage in Anatolia destroyed. The notes observed that the genocide remains the subject of an organised denial campaign, particularly by Turkey, despite extensive documentation, and that 32 countries have recognised it in various forms.

To become binding state policy, the decision required a vote in the Knesset. That vote never came. According to Haaretz, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu personally intervened to strip the item from the parliamentary agenda after Hajiyev contacted his office on Aliyevs behalf, with Israeli officials then assuring their Azerbaijani counterparts that the matter had been removed and would not be put to members before the summer recess.

Saars office denied that Netanyahu had cancelled the vote, but offered no alternative explanation for why it was not brought forward.

"There is a government decision [to recognise the genocide], and it was approved unanimously," Saar said. "It will not be changed, and that is the important and historic fact."

With the Knesset in recess until after Israels elections on 27 October, the legislation is unlikely to return in the current parliamentary session.

The Israeli initiative was widely read as a diplomatic rebuke to Turkey, whose relations with Israel have deteriorated sharply over the war in Gaza, and Ankara, which denies that the killings constituted genocide, accused Israel of seeking to divert attention from and cover up its own crimes. Azerbaijan, an ally of both states, called the move "a matter of serious concern" and urged Israel to reconsider what it termed a distortion of the events of 1915, with officials reportedly viewing it as Israel crossing a red line and complaining that they had learned of it only after it was announced.

Armenia itself kept its distance. The prime minister Nikol Pashinyan declined to comment on the Israeli decision, saying: "We see no need to respond, because we believe that not engaging in the issue of the weaponization of the Armenian Genocide is in the interests of the Republic of Armenia."