Back seat drivers
Narendra Modi’s visit to Israel this week was the first trip to the Jewish state by an Indian PM
BEYOND ALL the details of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 48-hour visit to Israel this week, two items that were not on the agenda stood out.
First, the absence of the almost regulatory parallel visit made by nearly all visiting statesmen to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah.
The second was the fact that, for nearly the entire visit, Mr Modi’s host, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, did not leave his side.
Beyond the historic aspect — it was the first visit of a serving Indian prime minister (Mr Modi visited once before as a BJP MP in 2006), and marked 25 years since the two countries established diplomatic relations — it sets in stone a shift in India’s previously pro-Arab foreign policy and signalled the obvious personal affinity between the two leaders.
Officially, the business side of the visit was the signing of seven agreements on civilian co-operation in fields of water desalination, agriculture, technology and space exploration, but the foundation of the burgeoning alliance, the ongoing security and military cooperation, was never far from the surface.
On landing at Ben-Gurion Airport, Mr Modi said that “alongside building a partnership for shared economic prosperity, we are also co-operating to secure our societies against common threats such as terrorism”.
What he did not mention is that India is now Israel’s largest market for arms exports, worth over a billion dollars a year. Israel is India’s third-largest foreign supplier of weapon systems.
Leaving Ramallah out of the visit was no coincidence. Palestinian Deputy Foreign Minister Tasir Jaradat chided Mr Modi saying on Al Jazeera, saying: “To play an important role between the two sides and to be able to spread the message of peace, one should visit both.”