On Sunday evening, PM Netanyahu called for an independent Kurdish state, at a policy speech in Tel Aviv. Netanyahu said the Kurds deserve independence and Israel should support that.
Iraqi Kurdistan controls some significant oil resources, and has managed to keep ISIS out of their territory.
Netanyahu’s statement goes against apparent US policy which imagines it can hold the disparate regions of what once was Iraq together, while somehow ignoring the Islamic fundamentalists of ISIS which has taken over large swaths of the country.
Over the weekend, Israel received it first shipment of crude oil from the fledgling independent Kurdish state, after nearly every other country in the world was afraid to take it due to threatened repercussions from Iraq. The Kurdish oil is piped to Turkey, where it is then shipped by oil tanker overseas.