On 16 February, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev met with his Israeli counterpart, Isaac Herzog, on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. Instead of challenging Israel’s actions and calling for a ceasefire, his silence on the ongoing genocide in Gaza served Israel in showcasing that it has not been isolated in the Muslim world. Ilham Aliyev signalled that he was willing to engage with Israel despite the potential backlash from Muslim nations. Azerbaijan, a relatively small, oil-rich ex-Soviet republic of the South Caucasus, might be geographically distant from the Middle East, but…