JERUSALEM: Israel supports the establishment of a Kurdish state, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday, as Kurds in Iraq gear up for a referendum on independence that lawmakers in Baghdad oppose.
Israel has maintained discreet military, intelligence and business ties with the Kurds since the 1960s, viewing the minority ethnic group — whose indigenous population is split between Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Iran — as a buffer against shared Arab adversaries.
On Tuesday, Iraq’s Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani said he would press ahead with the Sept. 25 referendum despite a vote by Iraq’s parliament rejecting it.
“(Israel) supports the legitimate efforts of the Kurdish people to achieve their own state,” Netanyahu said, in remarks sent to foreign correspondents by his office.
Western powers are concerned a plebiscite in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region — including the oil-rich city of Kirkuk — could divert attention from the war against Daesh militants.
Netanyahu said Israel does however consider the Turkey-based Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) a terrorist group, taking the same position as Turkey, the United States and the European Union.
An Israeli general told a conference in Washington last week that he personally did not regard the PKK, whose militants have been fighting Turkey for more than three decades, as a terrorist group.
Netanyahu, who is due to address the UN General Assembly on Sept. 19, voiced support for “the Kurds’ aspirations for independence” in a speech in 2014, saying they deserve “political independence.”
His latest remarks appeared to be a more direct endorsement of the creation of a Kurdish state.
But they will cut little ice in Baghdad, which has no diplomatic relations with Israel and has strong ties with Israel’s arch-foe Iran.
Iraq’s neighbors — Turkey, Iran and Syria — oppose the referendum, fearing it could fan separatism among their own ethnic Kurdish populations.
Kurds have sought an independent state since at least the end of World War One, when colonial powers divided up the Middle East after the collapse of the multi-ethnic Ottoman Empire.
Israel endorses independent Kurdish state
Israel endorses independent Kurdish state
Iraqi army fully takes over key base following US withdrawal
BAGHDAD: US forces have fully withdrawn from an air base in western Iraq in implementation of an agreement with the Iraqi government, Iraqi officials said Saturday.
Washington and Baghdad agreed in 2024 to wind down a US-led coalition fighting the Daesh group in Iraq by September 2025, with US forces departing bases where they had been stationed.
However, a small unit of US military advisers and support personnel remained. Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani in October told journalists that the agreement originally stipulated a full pullout of US forces from the Ain Al-Asad air base in western Iraq by September. But “developments in Syria” since then required maintaining a “small unit” of between 250 and 350 advisers and security personnel at the base.
Now all US personnel have departed.
Iraqi Army Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Abdul Amir Rashid Yarallah oversaw the assignment of tasks and duties to various military units at the base on Saturday following the withdrawal of US forces and the Iraqi Army’s full assumption of control over the base, the military said in a statement.
The statement added that Yarallah “instructed relevant authorities to intensify efforts, enhance joint work, and coordinate between all units stationed at the base, while making full use of its capabilities and strategic location.”
A Ministry of Defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly confirmed that all US forces had departed the base and had also removed all American equipment from it.
There was no statement from the US military on the withdrawal.
US forces have retained a presence in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq and in neighboring Syria.
The departure of US forces may strengthen the hand of the government in discussions around disarmament of non-state armed groups in the country, some of which have used the presence of US troops as justification for keeping their own weapons.
Al-Sudani said in a July interview with The Associated Press that once the coalition withdrawal is complete, “there will be no need or no justification for any group to carry weapons outside the scope of the state.”
