Critics say Athens appears to be embracing Israel\u2019s \u2018defence model\u2019 after announcing the largest purchase of its weapons.<\/p>\n
Athens, Greece \u2013 Greece is interested in jointly developing weapons with Israel, Greek officials have told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re an excellent customer of Israeli systems,\u201d Angelos Syrigos, chairman of the Greek parliament\u2019s Defence Affairs Committee, told Al Jazeera. \u201cThe leap in our defence relationship will happen when there\u2019s co-production of defence systems and common planning.\u201d<\/p>\n
The relationship is strengthening as Israel stands accused of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.<\/p>\n
On December 4, Greece\u2019s Defence Affairs Committee approved the purchase of 36 PULS rocket artillery systems at a cost of $760m, the largest Greek acquisition of Israeli weapons to date.<\/p>\n
The medium-range air defence system is to form part of Greece\u2019s Shield of Achilles, a 2.8-billion-euro ($3.3bn) layered air defence umbrella announced last year.<\/p>\n
Syrigos said that if co-production were on the table, the remainder of that budget could be devoted to Israeli systems.<\/p>\n
Greece is nominally a member of the European Sky Shield Initiative (ESSI) formed by Germany in 2022 as a vehicle to sell mostly German air defence systems such as Iris-T and Skyranger. But Greece is not known to have entered into talks to buy those systems.<\/p>\n
In contrast, Greece\u2019s Ministry of National Defence last month formed negotiating committees to buy three additional missile defence systems, Spyder, Barak and David\u2019s Sling, produced by the Israel-owned Rafael and Israeli Aerospace Industries, worth a potential 3.1 billion euros ($3.5bn).<\/p>\n
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The three systems, comprising short, medium and long-range air defence against airborne threats including ballistic missiles, would complete the Shield of Achilles.<\/p>\n
Greece and Israel are discussing a government-to-government deal that bypasses a competitive bid process.<\/p>\n
\u201cOtherwise, everyone would come in and tender an offer, which Greece wants to avoid,\u201d Kathimerini newspaper\u2019s foreign and defence affairs reporter Vassilis Nedos told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n
He explained why Greece prefers to award the contracts directly to Israel: \u201cIsrael has no problem giving you a qualitative edge. With other suppliers, you have to negotiate it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The procurement advisory committees, made up of officers from all four branches of the armed forces, are also discussing a \u201c360 approach\u201d involving unmanned aerial, surface and underwater vehicles with their Israeli counterparts, said Nedos.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve also discussed ballistic missiles with other countries,\u201d Syrigos said, without specifying which ones.<\/p>\n
Greek Defence Minister Nikos Dendias confirmed on January 20 that Greece wants to move towards co-development.<\/p>\n
\u201cIsrael, until a few decades ago, bought all the weapons it needed for its defence, and today it is at the summit of defence technologies,\u201d Dendias said during a visit from his Israeli counterpart. \u201cOur goal is for Greece to transition from a customer and buyer of defence systems to a co-producer of low-cost, dual-use, innovative products.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dealing with Israel amid genocide \u2018a problem\u2019<\/p>\n
But not everyone agrees that emboldening ties with Israel amid its ongoing deadly assaults on Gaza is a good thing.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot dealing with an international human rights issue because you\u2019re putting your strategic relationship first, is a problem,\u201d said Lefteris Papagiannakis, head of the Greek Council for Refugees, a legal aid group for refugees, referring to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you don\u2019t want to call it genocide, then don\u2019t, but as a humanitarian country, you have to do more than the bare minimum \u2026 It\u2019s as if Greece is copying Israel\u2019s defence model, and becoming the second-most heavily armed state in the east Mediterranean.\u201d<\/p>\n
But if Israel and the United States ever have a \u201crupture in their relationship for whatever reason\u201d, Greece will find itself in a difficult position, he added.<\/p>\n
Last year, the left-wing opposition Syriza party suggested Greece\u2019s national team boycott a friendly basketball match with Israel.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWhile famine in Gaza is killing thousands of people, [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu is openly declaring that his goal is ethnic cleansing,\u201d said a party announcement, referring to Israel\u2019s efforts to eject two million Palestinians from Gaza into Jordan and Egypt. \u201cMore and more countries are denouncing these genocidal policies.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shared threat perceptions<\/p>\n
Greece and Israel drew closer after 2010, when Israeli-Turkish relations frayed over Turkish aid to the Palestinians following clashes in the Gaza Strip between Palestinian armed groups and the Israeli army.<\/p>\n
As Greece and Israel drew closer, they formed a trilateral relationship with Cyprus, initially to discuss common energy projects, but now extending to security and defence.<\/p>\n
The three countries share similar threat perceptions from Turkiye, and Ankara has referred to their relationship as an \u201canti-Turkish\u201d alliance.<\/p>\n
In April 2019, they discussed a radar system based in all three countries to cover the Eastern Mediterranean. In December 2025, they signed a military cooperation work plan.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose who dream of dragging the region backward \u2026 will encounter a resolute alliance of free, strong nations capable of defending themselves,\u201d Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said during his visit to Athens on January 20, in what was widely interpreted as a thinly veiled reference to Turkiye.<\/p>\n
The Israeli-Turkish relationship has further deteriorated since December 2024, when forces backed by Ankara seized control of Syria.<\/p>\n
Greece and Israel have since begun joint military exercises.<\/p>\n
The extent to which Greece now sees its security as bound up with Israel\u2019s was revealed in a recent interview by Greek Deputy Foreign Minister Alexandra Papadopoulou with To Vima newspaper.<\/p>\n
\u201cImagine how Greece could survive on the edge of Europe amidst a completely Muslim region, if Israel should cease to exist,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Is cooperation possible?<\/p>\n
On February 2, the Hellenic Aerospace Industry announced it had taken a step in this direction, by combining its own Centaur anti-drone electronic warfare system with Israel Aerospace Industries\u2019 Barak anti-drone hard-kill rocket system, providing a soft-kill, hard-kill combined weapon.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are in conversation with a number of companies, including Israeli companies, to jointly develop systems,\u201d said Hellenic Aerospace Industry CEO Alexandros Diakopoulos. The goal, he told Al Jazeera, was \u201cto have joint development and co-production, with a transfer of knowledge.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both HAI and IAI are state-owned, but Greece and Israel have very different corporate and government cultures.<\/p>\n
\u201cIsraeli state companies are no different to private sector companies. But Hellenic Aerospace Industry unfortunately has so many problems that [I doubt] its administration can go out and borrow $5m, or hire people. The law doesn\u2019t allow it to operate like a private company and hire the people it needs to hire,\u201d Tassos Rozolis, the president of the Greek Association of Defence Industries, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n
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\u201cGreece is a very friendly nation to Israel and presently the cooperation between the two governments is very tight and very intimate,\u201d Israeli former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told Al Jazeera. \u201cAnd therefore, I think that on that basis, there is likelihood that many of the products which are produced by the Israeli companies, security defence companies, will be allowed in this kind of relationship to be sold to Greece.\u201d<\/p>\n
But can political intimacy make up for legal and administrative sclerosis in Greece?<\/p>\n
\u201cIf Hellenic Aerospace and Hellenic Defence Systems were set free to operate like Israeli state companies IAI and Rafael, it would be very different,\u201d Rozolis said.<\/p>\n
Source: RhinoEasy News<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Critics say Athens appears to be embracing Israel\u2019s \u2018defence model\u2019 after announcing the largest purchase of its weapons. Athens, Greece<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":867,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}