Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar flew to Athens on Thursday for trilateral talks with Greek Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis and Cypriot Foreign Minister Constantinos Kombos.
Over the last few years, the triangular relationship among these countries in the Eastern Mediterranean has strengthened. Sa’ar’s office called it “a diplomatic framework built on a regional strategic partnership, focusing on shared interests such as energy, economy and national security.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to host his Greek counterpart, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, and Cyprus’s President Nikos Christodoulides in Israel later this month. A statement from the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem said the tripartite summit aims to strengthen the “Hellenic Alliance,” which officially launched in January 2016.
In March 2023, Israel’s Ambassador to Cyprus Oren Anolik said the warmth of the friendship with Athens and Nicosia would have been “inconceivable some 20 years ago.”
Since that time, other regional players—particularly, Turkey and Iran, via its Hezbollah proxy in Lebanon—have shown the value of having a strong opposing alliance.
“For the Republic of Cyprus, the strengthening and deepening of our already excellent relations with Israel, always in cooperation with Greece, of course, is part of a holistic strategy with regards to our foreign policy, which has high on the agenda the cooperation with all like-minded countries in the region,” said Christodoulides at a June 2023 Hellenic Forum meeting in Nicosia.
This cooperation has extended to the defense realm; where Israel has signed a number of agreements with its Eastern Mediterranean partners over the last few months. This includes a €2 billion (about $2.17 billion) sale involving advanced radar and interception systems for Greece. Cyprus has already purchased Israeli-made Barak MX air-defense missiles to replace its Russian systems.
As Israel struggles to further its relations with the European Union, it has increasingly turned to regional allies and Western-aligned liberal democracies, such as Greece and Cyprus, for greater cooperation.