Oil contracts, defense cooperation and regional balancing against Iran. These are the key words that are usually used, in order to bring on the transactional partnership between Israel and Azerbaijan. Beneath this narrative oil flowing from Baku to Israel, and drones and missiles flowing from Tel Aviv to Baku have built up a vicious cycle that has underpinned both Azerbaijan’s ethnic cleansing of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) and Israel’s destructive campaigns in Gaza.
Oil Revenues and Drone Wars in Artsakh
Between October 2023 and July 2024 Azerbaijan supplied approximately 28% of Israel’s crude oil imports. The overlaying energy wealth permitted Azerbaijan to directly fund its military modernization purchasing billions in advance from Israeli firms like Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries. . In the 2020 war, Israeli-made loitering munitions like the Harop proved decisive. Amnesty International confirmed Azerbaijani forces used Israeli cluster munitions against civilian areas. In 2022/2023, Baku escalated by imposing a blockade on the Lachin Corridor(the only route connecting Armenians in Artsakh to Armenia), creating acute shortages of food, medicine, and fuel. The blockade culminated in September 2023 when Azerbaijan launched a lightning assault. More than 100,000 Armenians fled in days emptying Nagorno-Karabakh of its indigenous population. The consequences are not merely demographic. Human Rights Watch, documented forced displacement, arbitrary detention of civilians, and the destruction of religious and cultural landmarks. U.S. congressional resolutions and international scholars alike have characterized these events as a campaign of ethnic cleansing, pointing to the systematic removal of an indigenous population from its homeland. Despite provisional orders from the International Court of Justice, Azerbaijan proceeded unchecked, demonstrating the hollowness of international guarantees.
Settler-Colonial Logics
Ethnical cleansing, forced displacement, shortage of foods and blockage of any kind of aid contribute to shape the common thread that link ethnic cleansing of Artsakh to the ongoing genocide in Gaza. For Palestinians, as for Armenians, the pattern is strikingly similar: indigenous populations cast as existential threats, overwhelming force unleashed, and displacement justified as security. Both Artsakh and Gaza exemplify settler-colonial frameworks in which indigenous communities are treated as obstacles to sovereignty. Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, with centuries of continuity, were expelled to solidify Azerbaijani control, while Palestinians are displaced, besieged, and denied self-determination under Israeli policy. The partnership reinforces this logic: Azerbaijani oil sustains Israel’s military machine, while Israeli drones enforce Azerbaijan’s territorial consolidation.
Global Impunity and Structural Flaws of International Law
The persistence of global impunity is one of the most striking features linking Artsakh and Gaza. In both cases, extensive violations of international humanitarian law have been documented, from Azerbaijan’s blockade and mass displacement of over 100,000 Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh to Israel’s repeated use of the Dahiya Doctrine in Gaza, which deliberately targets civilian infrastructure. These practices violate the Fourth Geneva Convention, particularly Article 51, yet both states continue to act without meaningful consequence. The root of this impunity lies in the structural weaknesses of the international legal system. The United Nations lacks an independent enforcement mechanism, and its most powerful body, the Security Council, is bound by the consensus of the five permanent members (U.S., China, Russia, France, UK). Each holds a veto that can block enforcement even in the face of grave crimes. The United States has used this veto 45 times to shield Israel, most recently in February 2024, when it blocked a resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, and in November 2024, when it vetoed another resolution calling for a permanent ceasefire. Similarly, Azerbaijan benefits from structural silence: as a vital energy supplier to Europe and Israel, it has avoided punitive measures despite conducting what U.S. congressional resolutions and human rights groups have condemned as ethnic cleansing in Artsakh. Other international bodies face similar paralysis. The UN General Assembly passes resolutions, but they remain symbolic and non-binding. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) issues rulings, but it lacks coercive power; when Azerbaijan ignored provisional orders to protect Armenians in Artsakh, as when Israel dismissed orders to safeguard Palestinians in Gaza, the ICJ could only appeal to the Security Council, again subject to veto politics. The International Criminal Court (ICC), while empowered to issue arrest warrants such as those targeting Israeli leaders, can prosecute only individuals, not states. It has no police force of its own and depends on member states to act unlikely when geopolitical allies are involved. Neither Israel nor Azerbaijan recognizes the ICC’s jurisdiction, and their partnerships with powerful patrons further insulate them from accountability. In both cases, the enforcement mechanisms of international law are structurally paralyzed when power lies on the side of the violator, reinforcing a global order where energy, arms, and alliances outweigh humanitarian principles.
Conclusions
Brushing off the Azerbaijan and Israel partnership as a transactional agreement, that merely involves the exchange of oil and arms, fails to acknowledge how such cooperation reproduces settler-colonial logics. From strategic cooperation to lived realities of dispossession, authoritarian practices, covered by banners of security, find fertile ground to grow, inevitably bringing with them a profound human cost. This instance represents a further example of how mass violence is being transformed into a commodity market.
