Vietnam's Israel defence ties complicate historic Palestinian solidarity
Submitted by Minh Tran on Fri, 04/03/2026 - 11:00
Ho Chi Minh's revolutionary nation has struck a series of arms deals with Israel in recent years
A soldier with the Vietnam People's Army ceremonial delegation takes part in the funeral of Nguyen Phu Trong, general secretary of the Communist Party, in Hanoi on 26 July 2024 (AFP) Off Vietnam’s historical support for Palestine goes back to its revered founding leader, the revolutionary and statesman Ho Chi Minh.
In recent years, this support has been complicated by developing military ties with Israel. Vietnam, a one-party communist state with a population of over 100 million, is watching as the Middle East is turned into a live testing ground for the weapons systems already in its own military’s arsenal.
Spy satellites, the Spyder air defence system and Heron surveillance drones have all been procured by Vietnam in recent years.
Most recently, at the end of January, Vietnam’s defence ministry reportedly signed a $250m contract with Israel’s state-owned Rafael Advanced Defence Systems to acquire and locally produce the Spike Firefly loitering munition – also known as the “Maoz” drone.
While Hanoi has not officially announced the deal, state media has begun publishing articles praising the battlefield effectiveness of the “suicide drone”, the deployment of which in Gaza has been used by Rafael in promotional material.
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Israel is now Vietnam’s second most important defence supplier, trailing only Russia. Since 2015, Vietnam has also become one of the five largest importers of Israeli arms, according to the Database of Israeli Military and Security Export (DIMSE).
Deepening defence ties with Israel are seen by analysts as being consistent with Vietnam’s modern “bamboo diplomacy”, a foreign policy doctrine that emphasises flexibility, pragmatism and the primacy of national interests.
But some Vietnamese see this as a betrayal of the long-established solidarity with the Palestinian cause.
Vietnam-Palestine solidarity
Long before it emerged as a prominent arms customer of Israel, Vietnam was among Palestine’s most ardent supporters.
During the Cold War, both Vietnam and the Palestinian national movement situated themselves within the global anti-imperialist and (what was then known as) the Third World liberation struggle.
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For Palestine, Vietnam served as a trusted supporter, a beacon of hope, and a tactical lesson. In 1968, Vietnam established ties with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and consistently expressed support for the Palestinian revolution.
'The Vietnamese state has betrayed a lot of its revolutionary promises in order to chart a more neoliberal relationship'
– Evyn Le Espiritu Gandhi, academic
In a message to the International Conference for the Support of Arab Peoples in Cairo in January 1969, Ho Chi Minh declared that the Vietnamese people “vehemently condemn the Israeli aggressors” and “fully support the Palestinian people’s liberation movement”.
Vietnamese support for Palestine was more than just rhetorical.
“There's not only political expressions of solidarity, but also tactical and military exchanges,” said Evyn Le Espiritu Gandhi, an associate professor at UCLA who studies Vietnamese refugee histories and transnational solidarity movements.
Yasser Arafat, she noted, was inspired by what he called Vietnam’s “mighty revolution”. He sent groups of Palestinian fighters to Vietnam to study guerilla tactics mastered during its wars against France and the United States.
Vietnam gained from its ties with Palestine, too. “The benefit to Vietnam wasn’t material; it was reputational,” said Carlyle Thayer, emeritus professor at the University of New South Wales and a longtime expert on Vietnam’s defence policy.
Yasser Arafat visiting North Vietnam in April 1970 (AFP)
Through its alignment with the Palestinian revolutionary cause, Vietnam asserted itself as a champion of anti-imperialist struggle and strengthened its standing within the Non-Aligned movement. “It polishes Vietnam’s reputation, internationally,” Thayer told Middle East Eye.
Following the Hamas-led attack of 7 October 2023 and Israel’s ensuing genocide in Gaza, Vietnam has consistently reiterated its support for a two-state solution, voted in favour of UN resolutions condemning Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory, and called for a ceasefire in Gaza.
A pivot to Israel
Vietnam also has a long history with Israel.
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In 1946, Ho Chi Minh briefly met David Ben-Gurion, who later became the State of Israel’s first prime minister, in a hotel in Paris. Around that time, Ho even suggested the possibility of establishing a Jewish government-in-exile headquarters in Hanoi.
But he later distanced the Vietnamese nationalist movement from Ben-Gurion’s Zionism as it evolved into a settler-colonial project.
Decades later, in 1993, the two countries formally established diplomatic relations. But meaningful military cooperation materialised only in the 2010s, as Hanoi sought to diversify its arms suppliers beyond Russia.
In 2011, Israel Weapon Industries established a $100m production facility to manufacture Galil ACE 31 and 32 assault rifles for the Vietnam People’s Army. A defence memorandum of understanding was later signed in 2015, with Israel appointing a defence attache to Vietnam.
In the years that followed, Vietnam continued to acquire Israeli weapons, including Spyder air defence systems and Heron UAVs, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri).
For Hanoi, Israel's weapons are strategically comfortable: they are advanced, often come with technology-transfer provisions, and are not tied to the political contractual clauses usually associated with western arms exports.
They also differ from Soviet weapons, which China, Vietnam’s main potential adversary, understands well. Israel-procured coastal defence EXTRA rocket launchers, for example, have reportedly been deployed to bases in the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, which are subject to a territorial dispute between China and Vietnam.
'To some, nationalism is development, economy, national defence, regardless of the sacrifice of our anti-colonial history'
– Vietnamese youth activist
Bilateral arms trade came to an abrupt halt in 2018 because of a corruption scandal in Vietnam involving Nguyen Thi Thanh Nhan, a Vietnamese businesswoman who brokered many Israel-Vietnam arms deals.
She has been sentenced in absentia to 30 years in prison. Nhan is currently in the German government’s protection, in exchange for sensitive information about arms trade in Asia.
Discussions resumed in 2023, Thayer said. Last year, Vietnam signed a $680m deal for two spy satellites with Israel Aerospace Industries.
Economic relations between the two countries have also deepened. Since the 7 October attack, Vietnam has put into effect a free-trade agreement with Israel, with bilateral trade reaching $3.75bn in 2025. In January, Israel’s Arkia airline launched direct flights between Tel Aviv and Hanoi.
Thayer suggested that, besides commercial benefits, such flights might be militarily useful. “If you need something that’s in a small box that is necessary for defence,” he said, “you can have it shipped very quickly.”
A shift in Vietnam's national identity
In 2025, Vietnam marked 50 years since the fall of Saigon, known locally as Reunification Day. This was the moment the country declared victory in the “Resistance War against American Imperialism”.
However, since the Doi Moi economic reforms of the 1980s, which shifted the country from a centrally planned economy towards a “socialist-oriented market economy”, economic growth rather than revolutionary ideology has become central to the ruling Communist Party’s legitimacy.
“The Vietnamese state has betrayed a lot of its revolutionary promises in order to chart a more neoliberal relationship,” Evyn Le Espiritu Gandhi said.
Online, a grassroots pro-Palestine movement has emerged, though it operates within the constraints of Vietnam’s tightly controlled civic space.
“The main activity of the movement is to fill in the information gap left by mainstream media,” a prominent activist with more than 20,000 Facebook followers told MEE.
For her and many young Vietnamese sharing the same cause, the contradiction is stark.
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“For me, nationalism is heritage, the memory that we inherit,” the activist said. “But to some, nationalism is development, economy, national defence, regardless of the sacrifice of our anti-colonial history.”
The balancing act between rhetorical support for Palestine alongside strengthening defence ties with Israel signals a new reality in Vietnam’s foreign policy and national identity.
From the perspective of bamboo diplomacy, there is no contradiction. “The approach is dialectical,” Thayer said.
Vietnam will defend the principle of sovereignty for the Palestinians on the global stage, but only if doing so does not interfere with its national interest.
The calculus could be seen when Hanoi quickly accepted the invitation to become a founding member of US President Donald Trump’s proposed “Board of Peace”.
In February, the Communist Party’s chief, To Lam, travelled to the United States to attend its first meeting, wooing Trump with promises to buy more American goods.
Now, with the US and Israel waging war on Iran, Vietnam's dream of serious, continued growth may be colliding with the imperialism the country once fought.
Diplomacy Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam News Post Date Override 0 Update Date Mon, 05/04/2020 - 21:19
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