PM Netanyahu’s India visit is a landmark event
Oil is no longer a reason for India to support Arab-Muslim hostility against Israel and to allow a perception that it is in Arab pocket.
On 14 January, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will arrive in India for a four-day state visit, which will take him first to Gujarat, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state, and then to Delhi and Mumbai. Netanyahu will get a royal welcome. No living Israel leader has done more to forge a solid base of friendship between the two countries. Netanyahu’s is the second official visit of an Israeli Prime Minister to India since Israel’s creation in 1948. The first one was Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s in 2003, invited by BJP’s Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. However, the Congress Party returned to power a year later and it held Israel at an arm’s length politically because of its concerns about Muslim reactions, although it kept improving military and economic relations with the Jewish state.
A new period in the relations between the two countries began on 16 May 2014 when Narendra Modi, the Prime Ministerial face of the BJP swept into power. Modi was known as a friend of Israel before the elections. He changed India’s public stance toward Israel, from one of critical reserve to open political links, demonstrated by regular talks with Netanyahu, mutual state visits by the Presidents of the two countries and finally by his own historic visit to Israel in July 2017. Modi stopped India’s automatic support for every anti-Israeli resolution at the United Nations: some India has supported, others not. Modi’s policy change did not seem to be a temporary, easily reversible blip, but rather a reflection of deeper, socio-economic trends: the rise of a more Western-oriented young middle class, but also a nationalist Hindu resurgence. Modi remains very popular and is likely to stay in his position for quite some time. Before he came to power, it was assumed that a politician who was openly friendly to Israel could not be India’s leader because he would lose the Muslim vote at home and the cooperation of the Muslim world abroad. There were both internal and external Muslim constraints on India’s policies. Modi’s victory has eroded these constraints and broken an old taboo of Indian politics. His election triggered neither Muslim violence at home nor open hostility in the Muslim world. In fact, the erosion had begun long before. As India was slowly rising over the last decades, its unity became stronger and more visible. The great majority of India’s Muslims are moderate and want to be Indian. At the same time, the balance of power between Middle Eastern oil producers and consumers is changing. Oil is no longer the political weapon it once was. A major technological revolution, fracking has turned energy dependence on its head. The United States has moved towards energy independence, Europe gets most of its energy from Russia, and the Middle Eastern oil exporters have nowhere else to go other than Asia, with India their second largest market after China. Oil is no longer a compelling reason for India to support ArabMuslim hostility against Israel and to allow a perception that it is in the Arab pocket, no matter what. And it turned out that the Gulf oil producers and other Arab countries did not hold “their relations with New Delhi hostage to Indo-Israeli ties”, to quote India’s Middle East expert, Prof. P.R. Kumaraswamy. India is too important for them.
But a few days ago, two events seemed to call into question Modi’s policy change. One was India’s decision to cancel a US$500 million anti-tank missiles deal with Israeli defence company Rafael. This surprised the Israeli public. But a few days later, on 11 Janu- ary, India seemed to indicate that the deal will finally go ahead. Thus, Israel will learn that decisions of this huge and complicated country are sometimes difficult to read. The second event was India’s position regarding the US decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. The first, spontaneous Indian reaction differed from that of most other countries: “India’s position on Palestine is independent and consistent. It is shaped by our views and interests, and not shaped by any third country.” A masterpiece of diplomatic obfuscation that mentioned neither the United States nor Jerusalem. It frustrated the Arabs but fomented almost no violence in India. When the United Nations General Assembly met to discuss a proposal to condemn the US decision, many expected that India would abstain or not participate in the vote at all, but India voted with the condemning majority.
Passing events must not obscure long-term trends. The cancellation of the missile deal—and now the apparent annulment of this cancellation— and India’s vote in the United Nations are not linked. In any event, Israeli experts had warned before that their country’s arms sales to India would run into growing competition. And India’s vote was arguably not simply the result of its alleged fear about Indian workers and energy interests in the Arab Gulf, as some Indians have suggested. Many motives were in play. Generally, India does not want to stand closer to Israel than the big European countries that vote against Israel while always proclaiming that they are Israel’s “best friends”. People who know Prime Minster Modi and some of his advis- ers are convinced that his warm feelings for the Jewish state have not changed. But India moves slowly, while Israel wants to move fast. Patience is not an Israeli virtue.
All this will be on Prime Minister Netanyahu’s mind when his plane touches down. He regularly emphasises how much Israeli technologies can contribute to India. Surely the public will hear more about this during and after his visit. But Netanyahu is also an avid reader and history buff. Contacts between India’s civilisation and that of ancient Israel go back 3,000 years. The Hebrew Bible uses Sanskrit words for the spices that were imported from India for the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem—destroyed by the Romans in the year 70. While renewing links between ancient civilisations is a laudable goal, the immediate purpose of this visit is practical. Netanyahu will bring a large number of business people to India, for good reason. Israel’s annual trade with India, about US$5 billion, is too modest and not what it should be. Israel’s trade with Turkey reaches the same number, although Turkey is no friend of Israel and its population is twenty times smaller than India’s. More intriguing is the Prime Minister’s planned meeting with major Bollywood actors and managers. It is the first meeting of this kind. Finally, an Israeli leader understands that the longterm friendship between the two countries must not depend overwhelmingly on defence links. It is inexcusable that cultural relations have lagged behind so long.
We are all waiting for the first great Bollywood movie screened in Israel, with all its singing and dancing, a pure love story prevailing over vile gangsters that are fleeing in race cars but are finally caught, and all this against Israel’s beautiful scenery! Dr Shalom Salomon Wald, of the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI), Jerusalem, is the coauthor of India, Israel and the Jewish People: Looking Ahead, Looking Back, JPPI, 2017. There were memorable moments in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s historic visit to Israel last July—from the demonstrations of obvious personal chemistry between him and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, including their much-photographed walk on the beach near Hadera, to the exuberant reception accorded him by some 8,000 Indian-origin Israelis at a convention centre in Tel Aviv. But the three-day visit itself was far more—and far more strategically significant—than a collection of moments. Its sum was greater than its parts.
The same can be expected of Netanyahu’s reciprocal visit this week to India, with an itinerary that will be packed with political consultations and business-development meetings, one international conference, and numerous ceremonies, cultural events, and site visits.
The Israeli Prime Minister will surely speak of the dramatic growth in strategic cooperation and bilateral trade since India and Israel established full diplomatic relations almost 26 years ago.
He will surely point as well to the agricultural “centres of excellence” Israel has put in place across the country, sharing irrigation and plant science technology with Indian farmers, and to the other areas of scientific and technical cooperation that have expanded in recent years— in laboratories, on factory floors, and in outer space.
And he will certainly pay homage to India’s traditional respect for its small Jewish community, and commemorate the tragedy that befell it more than nine years ago, when a Jewish communal centre was among the targets of a Pakistani-based terrorist cell’s attack on Mumbai.
The message that will be sent from this second visit to India by a sitting Israeli head of government—following the historic visit of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in September 2003—will be that the world’s largest democracy and the Middle East’s only democracy are more than trading partners, more than platforms for technology exchange, more than attractive tourist destinations for their respective populations. They are allies, with common interests and common challenges.
That’s not to say that India and Israel have to agree on everything. As was evident in the 21 December UN General Assembly vote on Jerusalem’s status, when India was among 128 nations condemning President Donald Trump’s decision to recognise the reality of Israel’s capital, there will be times when India stands apart from the Jewish state. Most longstanding US allies, it must be noted, did not join with the United States and Israel that day in opposing the UN resolution.
Over the more than 25 years of diplomatic relations, in fact, there have been relatively few instances of Indian support for Israel in international forums—even as political, economic, agricultural, and security cooperation intensified. It’s been a glaring anomaly: a mutually beneficial partnership largely hidden—or so the theory went—to avoid alienating certain Indian constituencies and threatening certain Indian equities. Over the last two years, India has begun to deviate from that course, and senior officials have suggested that Israel-critical resolutions are now being carefully examined by New Delhi in this new era of more open contact. But sharp changes may be unlikely.
For decades, the Indian political establishment was reluctant to acknowledge India-Israel ties publicly. The reasons for this were many, including domestic politics in a country with a sizeable Muslim minority, the Cold War, and India’s leadership in the Non-Aligned Movement, the country’s reliance on Gulf oil for its energy needs, and the nearly 7 million Indian workers in the Gulf region,
Contacts between India’s civilisation and that of ancient Israel go back 3,000 years. The Hebrew Bible uses Sanskrit words for the spices that were imported from India for the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem— destroyed by the Romans in the year 70.