Modi, Netanyahu embrace has important implications
It de-hyphenates Israel from the Palestine issue India has championed
IT WAS a beaming Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi who stepped out of an Air India special aircraft at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport. Modi has a reputation for hugging foreign leaders, but his embrace of Israel’s Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, who came to receive him at the airport, was tighter and seemingly more intense – the kind one gives to a longlost friend.
The importance of his first state visit was not lost on either Modi or his host, Netanyahu, who tweeted that “Israel has been waiting for 70 years” for the Indian PM.
Modi’s visit, one of his 54 foreign journeys since he came to power in 2014, has important implications for foreign policy as it consciously de-hyphenates Israel from the Palestine issue that India had been championing since 1948.
Quite early in the life of this seemingly intractable problem, Mahatma Gandhi made it clear that “Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs”.
Till Modi came to power, Indian governments – mostly that of the Congress party – stuck to supporting Palestinian demand for sovereignty and independence, and criticising Israel’s expansionist land grab policy. India had recognised Israel in 1950, but restored full diplomatic ties in 1992 when it was quietly conveyed to New Delhi that if it wanted to better its ties with Washington, it would have to journey through Tel Aviv. Despite this not-so-subtle hint, India never really gave up the Palestinian cause and supported it in each international forum.
Detractors of the Congress party linked its reticence to have full diplomatic ties with Tel Aviv to the fear of the influential Muslim vote and the oil rich Arab countries. New Delhi recognised the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) and its leader, the late Yasser Arafat, who was close to both the assassinated leaders, Indira and Rajiv Gandhi. It is known that Arafat reportedly tipped off both of them about the impending threat to their lives – a warning unheeded.
Contrarily, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), riding on the right-wing Hindu vote, always had a great fascination for the state of Israel and “courageous” way it stood up to its Muslim neighbours.
It was a flawed interpretation of history, as well as the plural Palestinian society, that did not take into cognisance the circumstances in which the Palestinians were ousted from their homes during al-Nakba in 1948. Also, the BJP and its ideological mother ship, the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak, do not recognise or are unaware that both Palestine and Israel are religiously plural societies.
Such a skewed understanding of the Jewish state is used to envision a militaristic Hindu society that can fight off its hostile Muslim neighbours. In this grand project, in their view India has to partner Israel.
In glowing terms, a fiction has been disseminated of how Israel has always stood by India by providing intelligence and weapons whenever India was at war with Pakistan, unlike the Arab countries that always criticised India for its handling of the Kashmir mess. As Mohan Guruswamy, a strategic expert, succinctly pointed out in a panel discussion, Tel Aviv did not do any favours when it provided weapons or training to our troops – India paid for these services.
Understandably, the Israeli government of Netanyahu has been rather delighted with the rise of Narendra Modi in Indian politics. When he was elected in 2014, Netanyahu announced in a cabinet meeting that a friend had become India’s PM. He reportedly stepped out of the meeting to congratulate Modi on his win.
An Israeli official who met Modi in 2014 reportedly cheerily claimed that he had little understanding of West Asia and would pretty much endorse Tel Aviv’s policy. This observation has proved somewhat premature.
Since 2014, Modi and Netanyahu have met once at the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, but there has been a spike in official engagements. Indian President Pranab Mukherjee’s trip – that was combined with one to Ramallah – was followed by a visit of Israeli President Reuvin Revlin.
To Modi’s credit, he has made many trips to the Islamic world, including to Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iran and Turkey, to prove to the domestic Muslim voters that he can work with them.
Interestingly, the UAE and Saudis are working together to build a counterpoint to Iran; and India continues to work with Iran and is investing in its Chabahar port. During his trip to Israel, Modi reportedly stuck to India’s Iran policy.
Indian Muslims suffering from assault on their food habits from the government and its violent supporters aren’t amused by the hype surrounding Modi’s trip to Israel. They believe that the understanding struck over fighting terror together would translate into increased harassment of the Muslims. Their worry stems from the manner in which Modi’s government has handled the Kashmir issue, which has been mutated from one of self-determination to that of Islamic terror.
Many Modi government detractors claim it is following the same strategy in Kashmir that Israel follows in West Bank, but is getting increased support from Hindu chauvinists baying for Kashmiri blood.
Besides, on the defence front, India’s exposure to Israeli weapons has increased rapidly. Last year alone, according to the Stockholm Independent Peace Research Institute, 7.2% of all its weapons came from Israel. To sweeten his trip further, Modi in April cleared a $2 billion (R27bn) missile defence system deal from Israeli Aerospace. More deals are in the offing.
India has also shown great admiration for Israel’s desert farm technologies, its innovative environmental and other accomplishments in the field of technology. Netanyahu, who accompanied Modi everywhere during his three-day trip to his country, wants an enlargement of the relationship to other sectors too. However, for the vast legion of Modi supporters, many of them extremist Hindus, a relationship with Israel fundamentally means knowing ways to tame an over-hyped and over-sold Islamic terror in a plural India.
A FICTION HAS BEEN DISSEMINATED OF HOW ISRAEL HAS ALWAYS STOOD BY INDIA BY PROVIDING INTELLIGENCE AND WEAPONS