For decades, Vietnam’s public stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been rooted in anti-imperialist solidarity forged by its founding father Ho Chi Minh. Today, that long-standing commitment is colliding with a dramatic shift in Hanoi’s geopolitical and economic priorities, as the Southeast Asian nation builds increasingly close military and trade relations with Israel – creating a visible tension that divides even Vietnamese public discourse.
Vietnam’s support for Palestinian self-determination traces back to the Cold War era, when both Hanoi and the Palestinian national liberation movement positioned themselves at the forefront of global anti-colonial and Third World liberation struggles. In 1968, Hanoi formalized ties with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and a year later Ho Chi Minh issued a forceful public condemnation of Israeli aggression, reaffirming unwavering backing for the Palestinian people’s struggle. This solidarity extended far beyond rhetoric: Yasser Arafat, the iconic PLO leader, openly drew inspiration from Vietnam’s revolutionary victory against Western powers, dispatching groups of Palestinian fighters to Hanoi to study the guerrilla warfare tactics that brought victory over French and U.S. forces. For Vietnam, this alliance also carried strategic value: aligning with the Palestinian cause cemented the country’s reputation as a leading voice of anti-imperialism and boosted its standing within the Non-Aligned Movement, according to Carlyle Thayer, emeritus professor at the University of New South Wales and a veteran expert on Vietnamese defence policy. Even in the wake of the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack and Israel’s subsequent military campaign in Gaza, Hanoi has stuck to its long-standing positions: it has repeatedly affirmed support for a two-state solution, voted in favor of United Nations resolutions condemning Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, and repeatedly called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
But Vietnam’s relationship with Israel has evolved dramatically over the past three decades, transforming from distant diplomatic outreach to robust, multi-faceted cooperation rooted in shared strategic interests. Curiously, the two countries’ earliest interactions date back to 1946, when Ho Chi Minh held a brief meeting with David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s future founding prime minister, in Paris, and even floated the idea of hosting a Jewish government-in-exile headquarters in Hanoi. As Zionism evolved into a settler-colonial project, however, Ho Chi Minh and the Vietnamese nationalist movement quickly distanced themselves from Ben-Gurion’s agenda. Full formal diplomatic ties were only established in 1993, and meaningful military cooperation did not emerge until the 2010s, when Hanoi began seeking to diversify its arms suppliers away from its long-time top provider Russia.
Since that shift, Israeli defence exports to Vietnam have grown exponentially. Today, Israel ranks as Vietnam’s second-largest defence supplier, trailing only Russia, and Vietnam has become one of the top five importers of Israeli arms globally since 2015, according to the Database of Israeli Military and Security Export (DIMSE). Hanoi has acquired a wide range of advanced Israeli military systems in recent years, including Spyder air defence batteries, Heron surveillance drones, and Galil ACE assault rifles produced at a $100 million Israeli-owned manufacturing facility opened in 2011. Most recently, in late January 2026, Vietnam’s defence ministry is reported to have signed a $250 million contract with Israeli state-owned defence giant Rafael Advanced Defence Systems to acquire and locally produce the Spike Firefly loitering munition, also called the “Maoz” suicide drone. While Hanoi has not officially confirmed the deal, Vietnamese state media has already published pieces praising the weapon’s battlefield performance in Gaza – where Rafael has deployed the system to test its capabilities, and has used its operational success in marketing materials to arms buyers around the world, including Vietnam. In 2025, Hanoi finalized a $680 million deal to purchase two spy satellites from Israel Aerospace Industries, marking another major milestone in defence cooperation.
For Vietnam, Israeli arms hold unique strategic advantages that set them apart from alternative suppliers. Unlike Western weapons, Israeli military sales rarely come with binding political caveats that limit how the systems can be used, and they frequently include generous technology transfer provisions that allow Vietnam to build and modify weapons domestically. Unlike Soviet-designed arms, which Vietnam’s primary potential strategic rival China knows intimately, Israeli systems provide Hanoi with a technological edge in regional disputes. Already, Israeli-made EXTRA coastal rocket launchers have reportedly been deployed to Vietnamese bases in the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, according to open-source weapons trackers.
Defence cooperation is not the only area of growing ties: bilateral economic relations have expanded rapidly in recent years. A bilateral free trade agreement between Hanoi and Tel Aviv entered into force after October 2023, pushing total two-way trade to $3.75 billion in 2025. In January 2026, Israeli airline Arkia launched direct commercial flights between Tel Aviv and Hanoi – a connection that could also carry strategic defence benefits, Thayer notes, allowing for rapid shipment of sensitive small defence components between the two countries.
This shift toward closer ties with Israel aligns with Hanoi’s modern “bamboo diplomacy” doctrine, a foreign policy framework that prioritizes flexibility, pragmatism, and the advancement of core national interests over ideological alignment. However, the growing defence relationship has sparked criticism from within Vietnam, with many observers arguing that it represents a betrayal of the country’s revolutionary commitment to Palestinian liberation.
“The Vietnamese state has betrayed a lot of its revolutionary promises in order to chart a more neoliberal relationship,” explained Evyn Le Espiritu Gandhi, an associate professor at UCLA who studies Vietnamese transnational solidarity movements. Since the Doi Moi economic reforms of the 1980s, which shifted Vietnam from a centrally planned economy to a socialist-oriented market system, economic growth has replaced revolutionary ideology as the primary source of legitimacy for the ruling Communist Party, a shift that has reshaped all areas of foreign policy.
A grassroots pro-Palestine movement has emerged online among Vietnamese youth, operating within the constraints of the country’s tightly controlled civic space. The movement’s core work centers on filling information gaps about the Gaza conflict left by state-aligned mainstream media, and it has gained significant traction on social media platforms. For many young Vietnamese activists, the contradiction between Hanoi’s rhetorical support for Palestine and its deepening military ties to Israel is impossible to ignore. “For me, nationalism is heritage, the memory that we inherit,” one prominent activist with more than 20,000 Facebook followers told Middle East Eye. “But to some, nationalism is development, economy, national defence, regardless of the sacrifice of our anti-colonial history.”
From the perspective of Hanoi’s pragmatic bamboo diplomacy, there is no inherent contradiction in this balancing act, Thayer argues. “The approach is dialectical,” he explained. Vietnam is willing to defend Palestinian sovereignty on the global stage as long as doing so does not conflict with its core economic and security interests. This flexible, interest-driven approach has guided Hanoi’s recent participation in other high-profile global initiatives, including its decision to quickly join the founding membership of U.S. President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace”, with Communist Party chief To Lam traveling to the U.S. in February 2026 to attend the group’s first meeting and pledging increased purchases of American goods to strengthen bilateral ties.
Now, as the United States and Israel expand conflict into Iran, Vietnam’s decades-long pursuit of steady economic growth is increasingly colliding with the anti-imperialist legacy that once defined the country’s global identity – leaving Hanoi to navigate a precarious balancing act between its history and its current ambitions.