Azerbaijani oil to Israel during the war on Gaza §

## Origin Israel imports nearly all of its crude oil. Azerbaijan has been a major supplier since 2006 through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline (BTC), which terminates at the Turkish Mediterranean port and from which crude is shipped to the Israeli refinery at Ashkelon. The Israeli-Azerbaijani relationship rests on three pillars: oil exports, Israeli arms exports (notably the loitering munitions used decisively in the 2020 war) and shared security interest vis-a-vis Iran. ## Mechanism The BTC pipeline carries roughly 600,000 to 700,000 barrels per day. Tankers loaded at Ceyhan ship the crude to Ashkelon. After 7 October 2023, with Israel at war in Gaza, Israeli purchasers continued to receive Azerbaijani crude through the same channel. Investigative reporting by Haaretz, +972 Magazine and others documented that Azerbaijan supplied roughly 30 to 40 percent of Israeli crude during the conflict, the largest single share. ## Effects Azerbaijan continued to provide a critical resource to a state under international scrutiny for its conduct of the Gaza war. Multiple parties (including South Africa's ICJ genocide case against Israel) have argued that suppliers of military or strategic resources to Israel during this period bear a complicity question. The trade was uninterrupted by the 2023 ethnic cleansing of Karabakh or the contemporaneous EU criticism of Azerbaijan. ## Reception and politics Israel acknowledged Azerbaijan as a strategic supplier. Azerbaijan avoided public commentary on the Gaza war. Critics in Armenian, Palestinian and Western progressive circles have pointed to the symmetry: Azerbaijan armed by Israel, Israel fuelled by Azerbaijan, while both states resolve self-described "indigenous" challenges by force. The Italian, Turkish and Israeli legs of the same energy infrastructure (gas to Italy via TAP, oil to Israel via BTC) make the political-economic logic of the post-2020 settlement legible. editorial