“THE BUREAUCRATIC JUNGLE THAT AFFLICTS OUR TIES MUST GO”
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in conversation with India Today Group Editorial Director Raj Chengappa
Israel Prime Minister BENJAMIN NETANYAHU’s extensive visit to India gave a major boost to relations between the two countries. In an exclusive interview with India Today Group Editorial Director RAJ CHENGAPPA, he talks of the changing dynamic in Indo-Israeli ties. Excerpts:
RA J CHENGAPPA: Shalom, and welcome to India. BENJAMIN NETANYAHU. Thank you, namaste. This is a dream come true.
You met Prime Minister Narendra Modi as soon as you landed. He gave you a warm hug. You too had hugged him when he came to Tel Aviv. What is the special relationship you have?
First of all, there is a special relationship between our countries, a special relationship between our people and a special relationship between leaders. I respect Prime Minister Modi as a great leader. I see in him a kindred spirit, because he is impatient to bring the future to his people and change the world. In many ways, I think our partnership can do a lot of things. I said to the [Indian] foreign minister that the partnership between Israel and India is a marriage made in heaven but consecrated on earth.
In Tel Aviv, you had said the sky is not the limit for the two countries. Some dark clouds have emerged, particularly after India voted against the US resolution to recognise Jerusalem [as the capital of Israel]. How has that impacted relations? Are you disappointed? Well, look, I don’t think one vote affects the general trend. Yes, naturally, we are disappointed, but I think this visit is a testimony to the fact that our relationship is moving forward on so many fronts, not only in the political sense but in a technological sense, in security matters, tourism, and the level of the individual citizen. The fact that you can grow your crops better, that you can have better, cleaner water, better energy, cleaner air... these are things that make a difference in the lives of people. And I think our cooperation answers that. And ultimately, you’ll see that reflected in all the UN votes.
What are the big things that you hope to achieve during this visit?
Strengthening cooperation in various technological areas, especially agriculture, but also in all the other areas that are changing the world, in satellites and drones. Like drones for agriculture, can you imagine that? This is what Israel can do for the Indian farm—put a drone in the sky, pick data, photograph the field and then direct the water to the level of the individual plant. You can produce more crops for less—less water, less energy. This is life-changing. This is one area I intend to concentrate on, but there are many others. It is using technology to change not only the future but to change lives today to make people healthier, safer, better nourished, to live longer, better lives.
One area that India and Israel have great congruence in is counter-terrorism. You are bringing young Moshe
Holtzberg, it is going to be an emotional moment for him when he lands in Mumbai. But his parents’ killers still roam free, including Hafiz Saeed. How can Israel help India and the world book the culprits?
In this and in many other cases of terrorism, the key is intelligence. You can’t be everywhere all the time. The key is intelligence and Israel has, on the whole, superb intelligence. No one is better, I would say, than our intelligence services and we share with you our intelligence. We have stopped, over the last few years, some 30 major terrorist attacks. Not vis-a-vis India alone but dozens of countries. We shared intelligence with them. Ultimately we’ll catch up with the [26/11] killers, but the important thing is to prevent future attacks. Israel protects the lives of so many people. When you board a plane, you want to know it will not be blown up mid-air, that it will take off and land safely. When that happens, usually Israel has something to do with it, not on every flight but on many flights.
You and Prime Minister Modi had talked of strong measures. Would that include surgical strikes? Do you approve of what India did?
Well, I’d let India make its own choices. But I think the doctrine of fighting terrorism is—one, have intelligence so you can prevent it; and second, take action against the killers, not against innocent people. It’s something that’s not always easy to do. These are the two principles—you fight terrorism by fighting terror.
And you approve, of course, of what India did in the surgical strikes.
I am trying to be the foreign minister, I’m trying to be a diplomat. Because I hold two portfolios: I am prime minister and foreign minister at the same time.
There is another area we are concerned about. Israel shares a very good rapport with China, and China has been blocking an Indian resolution with the UN to blacklist Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar. Will Israel use its good offices to persuade China to lift the blockade so that the resolution goes through?
I think these things are not best discussed in such interviews, especially if you want to make progress.
Just before you came, India cancelled a major defence deal on the Spike anti-tank missile. Has that impacted the defence relationship?
I hope that this visit will help resolve the issue. I think there is a reasonable chance we can reach an equitable resolution but we will have to wait till the end of this visit. Our defence relationship is quite significant and it encompasses many things. The key word is defence, we want to defend ourselves. We are not aggressive nations but we are very committed to making sure that no one can commit aggression against either one of us.
You have a large business delegation accompanying you, one of the largest we have seen from Israel. How can we move India and Israel’s relations beyond diamonds and defence?
By having a free trade agreement, I would say, or moving in that direction. Israel is changing so rapidly. We are creating industries out of thin air. You have a very well-known car industry here, with some exceptional people leading it. But imagine, we have created a car industry in just the last five years, with companies that have been sold to Google for 15 billion dollars. I don’t know if you use Waze satellites and guidance direction systems in your cars, that’s an Israeli company too. We have 500 start-ups that just deal with automotive technology, autonomous vehicles. This is changing so rapidly because future cars are going to be, like, 85 per cent software and 15 per cent hardware; it will basically be a computer on wheels. And Israel has a car industry that receives billions of dollars of investments every year. Why shouldn’t we have this same partnership between us and Indian car manufacturers? This happens everywhere—digital, health, water, agriculture, energy, transportation... every single area... IT. And that’s before you discuss security. There’s just a whole world that is erupting, exploding. And we are seizing the future, the future belongs to those who innovate. Israel is an innovation nation. India has great innovation. In Silicon Valley, they say, oh, there are two dialects you hear—you hear Hindi dialects and you hear Hebrew. Sometimes, you hear a little English too. I think this visit will help secure this partnership which is so natural, which is so promising.
You had used a phrase in Tel Aviv, I2 T2 [Indian talent times Israeli technology for tomorrow]. India and Israel have signed technological agreements. What do you need to spur this on, what is the progress on this? It is slicing through the bureaucracy. We are all suffering from this malaise, this disease of bureaucracy. I chair a ministerial committee that meets every few weeks and I take a machete and hack through the wild vines of bureaucracy. I have started doing this in the last two years. And we have moved up in the competitive index, from No. 27 in the world to No. 16. So I hope that on this visit, I don’t want to tackle all of Indian bureaucracy. I want to hack a path in the bureaucratic jungle that afflicts us... to allow Israeli entrepreneurs to come to India, do business with India for the benefit of the people of India.
On this visit, you may have tasted a lot of Indian food. Anything in particular that you really liked?
Chicken tikka masala, that’s it. I love Indian food.
Given that Prime Minister Modi has championed yoga, there is even an international day and the UN observes it, do you do yoga?
I don’t do yoga but when I wake up in the morning and look to the right, the first democracy I see is India. And when Mr Modi wakes up and does yoga and looks left, the first democracy he sees is Israel. This is a grand partnership. Prime Minister Modi was very kind to come and receive me and my wife at the airport. Then we drove into town and named the square, a commemoration for fallen Indian soldiers, for Haifa. Haifa is one of the cities that was liberated by Indian soldiers. It was very moving. It was such an expression of gratitude, almost the closing of a circle, a 100 years later. What a grand meeting of two great peoples and our two great civilisations, two of the oldest civilisations on earth.
“I respect Prime Minister Modi as a great leader. I see in him a kindred spirit, because he is impatient to bring the future to his people and change the world.”