Modi Israel

At G20 Virtual Summit, PM Modi Highlights ‘Convergence’ Over West Asia Conflict

Stating that diplomacy and dialogue was the only way, Modi also cited a permanent ‘two-state solution’ to the Israel-Palestine dispute as part of the ‘consensus.’

New Delhi: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that there was a seven-point “convergence” among G-20 leaders about the Hamas-Israel war, including the need for a two-state solution, even as he hoped that the ongoing conflict will not escalate into a regional conflagration.

Meanwhile, the issue of Ukraine was also discussed, with Russian President Vladimir Putin urging measures to halt the unfolding “tragedy”, which observers claimed was his most conciliatory remarks in recent times on the Ukraine war.

Modi chaired the last G20 meeting of the year-long rotating Indian presidency, joining leaders across the globe in a virtual conference. India will be handing over the presidency to Brazil on December 1.

Among the major leaders, US President Joe Biden and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak did not participate. Chinese President Xi Jinping, who had also not travelled to India for the summit, was also missing. However, another notable absentee at the Delhi summit, Putin, took part in the virtual conference.

‘Death of civilians condemnable’

In his opening remarks, Modi said that new challenges have arisen since the Delhi summit in September. “The situation of insecurity and instability in the West Asia region is a matter of concern for all of us. Our coming together today symbolizes that we are sensitive to all issues and stand together to resolve them. We believe that terrorism is unacceptable to all of us. The death of civilians, wherever they happen, is condemnable,” he said.

On October 7, Hamas launched a terror attack from Gaza into Israel, killing over 1,400 people and taking scores of hostages. In retaliation, Israel launched air strikes, followed by ground operations inside Gaza which has killed over 13,000 people.

After six weeks of continuous violence, the Israeli government and Hamas announced a day ago, on November 22, that they have reached a deal for the release of 50 hostages for 150 Palestinian prisoners, along with a humanitarian ‘pause’ for at least four days.

Welcoming the news about the hostage deal, Modi said that he hoped that all hostages were released and that there was “timely and continuous delivery of humanitarian aid”.

“It is also important to ensure that the war between Israel and Hamas does not take any regional form,” he added.

At the conclusion of the virtual summit which lasted over three hours, Modi said that after hearing all the leaders, there was “convergence” (sahmati) on many issues related to the conflict in West Asia at the G20.

He listed seven points on which there was commonality of views, ranging from zero tolerance of terrorism to declaring that the deaths of “innocent people”, especially women and children, was “not acceptable”.

Stating that diplomacy and dialogue was the only way, Modi also cited a permanent ‘two-state solution’ to the Israel-Palestine dispute as part of the “convergence”.

“The G20 is ready to provide all support in this,” said Modi.

‘No G20 proposal on West Asia as such’

Later, external affairs minister S. Jaishankar said, “Was there a G20 proposal (on West Asia) as such? No,” adding that there was universal welcome for Wednesday’s announcement of a hostage release deal.

In answer to another query at the media briefing, Jaishankar said that while the majority of the leaders had batted for the two-state solution, “I can’t say there was a consensus on the two-state solution”.

“This whole idea spillover…honestly, I would say the focus is right now on ensuring that it doesn’t even spill over to beyond where it is,” he told reporters.

‘Military operations are always a tragedy’

Besides West Asia, the Ukraine war also figured, especially with Russian President Putin addressing the G20 meeting for the first time after Russia’s invasion in 2022.

“Some of our colleagues here have mentioned that they are shocked by ‘Russia’s ongoing aggression in Ukraine.’ Indeed, military operations are always a tragedy for specific people, specific families, and the country as a whole. And we must certainly think about how to stop this tragedy,” he remarked.

He also asserted that Russia “has never refused to negotiate peace with Ukraine”.

“It is not Russia, but Ukraine that has publicly announced that it is withdrawing from the negotiation process. Moreover, the country’s leader signed an executive order prohibiting such negotiations with Russia,” stated Putin.

According to Reuters, the remarks at the G-20 virtual meeting were “one of Putin’s most dovish on the war for months and contrasts with his sometimes long diatribes about the failings and arrogance of the United States”.

India’s Host of #SupportIsrael Posters Betray a Persecution Complex

From the Indian nationalist perspective, Israel is a tiny state – surrounded by hostile countries – but nonetheless a strong one, making it a good role model to emulate.

In all the media coverage surrounding the Israel-Palestine conflict – or rather Israel’s relentless attacks on Gaza – what stands out most starkly in India is the overwhelming support among regular folk for Israel and its brutalities against Palestinians. For a while, hashtags like #IndiaSupportsIsrael and #IndiaStandsWithIsrael were ubiquitous on social media, which momentarily reminded me of the #IndiaSupportsCAA hashtag from a year before.

“To save your nation and its people from Radical Islamic terrorism is the fundamental right of every nation,” actress Kangana Ranaut wrote on her Instagram story (after her Twitter handle was blocked) to her over 7.5 million followers. The text’s backdrop showed an image of snipers in hot pursuit beaming lasers on targets. “India stands with Israel. Those who think terrorism should be replied with dharna (protest) and kadi ninda (censure) must learn from Israel,” she said.

Other posters were more virulent. “Gaza should be destroyed,” said one Twitter user; while another put out a cartoon image of an Indian Muslim man wailing, “Pray for Palestine!” as he stood above the corpses of Hazaras, Hindus, Balochs and Uighurs in Pakistan and China respectively. Beneath a video that showed Israeli settlers dancing while the Al Aqsa Mosque burned,[1] somebody wrote, “Jai Sriram. India with Israel. Go ahead and kill jihadis”.

A cartoon of an Indian Muslim man saying, “Pray for Palestine!” over the corpses of Hazaras, Hindus, Balochs and Uighurs in Pakistan and China. Photo: Twitter

Even if the above posts are brushed aside as the errant outpourings of a hysterical few, that there is a clear and concerted call to rally behind Israel among many Indians is unmistakable.

To be fair, the seeds for the love for Israel have been simmering in the Hindutva groundswell for many years. In 2016, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat said, “Israel was attacked by the surrounding Islamic countries on five occasions, but the Israeli people repulsed their aggressions and extended their boundaries due to the strong resolve to save [their] motherland.” But it is only now, legitimised by the rightwing atmosphere in both India and Israel, that vague murmurings have broken through our top-soil and arrived on our computer screens in open rage.

Also read: In Run up to Election, Banners of Modi-Netanyahu Make an Appearance in Israel

One internet poster attempted to answer why we should support Israel in an ostensibly logical way by spelling out cherry-picked news stories:

“1) In 2008, Israel sent 40 paramedics and forces during the Mumbai attacks. 2) India and Israel have very close cultural ties. Thousands of Israeli tourists visit India every year. 3) Israel was one of the few nations that did not condemn India’s nuclear tests in 1998. 4) After the US gave Pakistan Harpoon missiles, Israel sold India the Barak 1 missile, which can intercept Harpoon missiles. This restored balance between India and Pakistan. 5) In 1971 Israel quietly helped India in the war against Pakistan, supplying arms and weapons.”

What this post missed out on the military front was that in 1999 Israel also helped India in the Kargil war, and in 2001 the IDF also provided humanitarian relief following the Bhuj earthquake. On the economic side, trade between the two countries grew from USD 200 million in 1992 to USD 4.13 billion in 2016. In 2019, concomitant to Netanyahu and Modi’s friendship, Israel’s exports to India rose by 9%.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu walk during their visit to Gandhi Ashram in Ahmedabad, January 17, 2018. Photo: Reuters/Amit Dave/Files

But in none of the internet comments that I read was there even a hint of appreciation for the most basic history of the Levant. There was no mention, let alone an understanding of the over seven decades-long oppression of Palestinians by a largely occupying force. Nor was there any discussion about how the creation of the State of Israel was accompanied by the exodus of Palestinians from their ancestral homes. Needless to say, there is little knowledge among Indians about the current pulls and pressures of this most recent altercation in which one key factor is the forced eviction of Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah, a part of East Jerusalem, in order to make way for Jewish settlements deemed illegal under international law.

Few know that after more than fifty years of occupation, Gaza is now an area with more than 5,000 inhabitants per square kilometers that observers widely describe as the world’s largest open-air prison. While Israel has been accused of committing war crimes in Gaza, Hamas, the Islamic Resistant Movement of the region, classified by many countries as a terrorist organisation, has fired rockets from its small blockaded strip of land towards the Jewish state.

So why in this conflict do so many Indian nationalists consistently side with Israel? Where does our Israel adulation stem from? The obvious answer of course is the common and constant perceived threat of “Islamic Terrorism”. But this is only as true as it is easy.

An examination of the underpinnings of both nation states’ nationhoods bares deeper roots of India’s admiration of Israel throwing light on curious connections and machinations that keep the edifice of our national psyche in place.

Also read: For Palestinians Under Israeli Occupation, Regard for India Runs Deep

A shared sense of persecution

Nationalists in both countries are beset by a sense of besiegement by antagonistic Muslim neighbours, within and without. Both nationalist Jews and Hindus, each who consider themselves the primogenitors of their land, harbour feelings of persecution. If Jews look back upon the Holocaust as their darkest and deathliest time which is never to be forgotten, many Hindus view the partition of the subcontinent, which is itself seen as the culmination of centuries of Muslim rule, as their personal rock-bottom.

Just as Jewish Israel is surrounded by Arab states, Hindu majority India is flanked by two Muslim states which, according to the Hindutva worldview, were carved out from a composite and sacred Indic whole. While it’s plain forgotten that it was the British who drew borders along religious lines in both places, for which India, Israel and Palestine continue to suffer enormously, and that prominent RSS leaders have themselves admired the Nazis who killed over six million Jews, as per the contemporary line of thinking it is the ever-present and persistent threat of ‘Islamic Terror’ that is paramount. It always overrides.

Given this mindset, it makes sense why in November 2019, the Indian Consul-General in New York, Sandeep Chakravorty, suggested to a gathering of Kashmiri Hindus that India should follow the Israeli model and build settlements in the Kashmir Valley to secure the return of Hindus.

A female demonstrator runs for cover during a protest where Palestinians demand the right to return to their homeland, at the Israel-Gaza border in the southern Gaza Strip. Photo: Reuters/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa

“It wasn’t a coincidence,” Somdeep Sen argued in his September 2020 article in Foreign Policy, “that the Indian Consul General in New York was speaking to a gathering of Kashmiri Hindus. The return of exiled Hindus to Kashmir has long been central to the Hindu nationalist political agenda. And for the Consul General, Israel serves as a model for the way exiled people might reclaim their homeland. So, referring to the controversial revocation of Article 370 and 35A of the Indian constitution, Chakravorty described the move as an attempt to protect Hindu culture in Kashmir—not unlike the way Jewish people maintained their cultural identity in their years of exile”.

However, from an Indian nationalist perspective, there is another angle, as well. Israel is a tiny state but nonetheless a strong one. It is surrounded by hostile countries but there is still the perception that nobody can really mess with it. Importantly, Israel has the support of many in the west and so its transgressions, whatever they may be, often get overlooked. It is thus a good role model to emulate.

But as many commentators have noted, our allegiance wasn’t always tilted this way. Many Indians before, as even today, were pro-Palestine. Writing in his Harijan weekly in November 1938, Mahatma Gandhi himself said: “Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense the England belongs to the English and France to the French”.

Also read: Indian Diplomat Wants ‘Israel Model’ in Kashmir, Sets Off Controversy

In fact, India voted alongside Arab states against the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine in 1947 arguing that it violated the principles of national self-determination in the UN charter which granted people the right to decide their own destiny.

A shared sense of the uniqueness of their sacred language

Tied to the point that nationalists in both countries believe that they have the original and rightful claim to their land is the shared feeling of a people inheriting an old and sacred language that brings them under one umbrella.

Hebrew, the liturgical tongue of the Jews, was revived and modernised towards the end of the 19th century and into the 20th century such that its use changed from the sacred language of Judaism to a spoken and written language used for daily life in Israel. This was done to foster ethno-nationalistic feelings certainly, but also out of necessity and practicality as a diversity of Jews had started arriving in Palestine and establishing themselves alongside the existing Jewish community in the region.

In the first Aliyah, or major wave of Zionist migration to Ottoman Palestine between 1881 and 1903, the Jews who came, estimated at 25-35000, were mostly from Eastern Europe and Yemen. In the second Aliyah, which took place between 1904 and 1914, a further approximately 35,000 migrants came mainly from the Russian Empire. It was imperative to have a lingua franca connecting these linguistically disparate but religiously united groups that would comprise the new state of Israel and Hebrew was ideal for the role.

Today Hebrew is Israel’s official language and over 5 million people speak it as their native tongue. Moreover, making Aliyah, ‘the act of going up—i.e. towards the Holy Land of Jerusalem’, one of the most basic tenets of Zionism, was enshrined into law on July 5, 1950. Section 1 of the Law of Return declares: “every Jew has the right to come to this country as an oleh [immigrant].”

Likewise, in India, the desire to revive Sanskrit has been expressed many times. But “the demand which has periodically surfaced over the past century for instituting Sanskrit as the national language”, writes Sumathi Ramaswamy in her article ‘Sanskrit for the Nation‘, “has been couched in exactly the opposite terms [to Europe where the modern vernacular spoken by the majority of citizens became the national language]….Sanskrit deserves this status in the view of its advocates precisely because it is nobody’s mother tongue.”A stance that is remarkably similar to the status of Hebrew among Jews in the late 19th century.

She references an 1879 essay entitled “Should we call ourselves Aryan?”, in which A. Mittra wrote: “Is it not a painful, a shameful necessity that compels me, at the present moment to advocate the cause of Aryan learning in a foreign language? Should not Sanskrit rather than English be the universal medium of communication in the Aryan land?’

Also read: Indians Who Oppose Colonialism Should Support the Palestinian Cause

Fascinatingly, there is even a 167-page Sanskrit book titled Bhuvamanita Bhagavadbhasa, published in 2004, about Eliezer Ben-Yehuda himself, the chief driver behind the resurrection of Hebrew from a moribund sacred language into a modern one.

About this book, Eric Gurevitch writes in his EPW article in July 2017, “[It] invites the reader at the outset to draw several comparisons: between Hebrew and Sanskrit, India and Israel, Hindus and Jews. As an account about the “revival” of one language, namely Hebrew, popularly conceived of as ancient, sacred, liturgical, and recently “revived,” told in another language, namely Sanskrit, which is popularly conceived of as ancient, sacred, liturgical, dead and needing to be “revived,” Bhuvamanita Bhagavadbhasa itself serves as an image of the world it describes. It thus links the community that it hopes will change how Sanskrit is used in India to a community from a different nationalist moment. “There are many similar parts in the path of revival of Hebrew and Sanskrit,” the author Vishwasa wrote. “These parts become evident with the careful reading of this little story.””

A shared sense of being the original sons of the soil

A natural corollary to the above feelings of sharedness with Israel among Hindutva nationalists brings me to arguably the most important one: the overarching sense that India is the natural homeland for Hindus in much the same way Israel is the historical home of the Jews. It is exactly this sentiment which found legal expression in the passing of the Citizen Amendment Act (CAA), 2019. Just as Israel’s Law of Return gave teeth to Israel’s Zionist basis so should Citizen Amendment Act (CAA) find its feet and force in India goes the Hindutva theory.

As Somdeep Sen argued in his September 2020 article on Foreign Policy, “It is no surprise then that StandWithUs, a pro-Israel advocacy organisation that publishes pamphlets in Hindi and the Israeli Consul General for South India Dana Kursh, reacted to India passing the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) by saying: “India as a sovereign nation has the right in enacting the CAA … India’s sovereignty is to be respected and she knows how to protect her people.” India, for its part, displayed the extent of its alliance with Israel when in June 2019 it voted against granting Palestinians consultative status in the U.N.’s Economic and Social Council. Responding to the vote—a historic shift in India’s usual, pro-Palestine voting record at the U.N.— Netanyahu tweeted, “Thank you @NarendraModi, thank you India, for your support and for standing with Israel at the UN.”

It is a painful irony that if on the one hand it has been contended that Hindu nationalists are transforming India into an Israel-style ethnostate, the CAA which excludes Muslims refugees from acquiring Indian citizenship is itself, as has been noted, deeply reminiscent of the Nuremberg Laws whereby the Nazis revoked Reich citizenship for Jews.

Also read: Gaza, Apartheid Israel and the Last Stand of Settler Colonialism

The other smaller irony is that for all our admiration of Israel, when Netanyahu thanked 25 countries who supported Israel in this latest round of attacks India was conspicuously absent. Still, perhaps it is a hark back to our history of solidarity with oppressed peoples, a Nehruvian idea, that led India to support the ‘just Palestine cause’ at the UN recently.

One internet poster reminded the others that India’s support for Palestine extends as far back as October 1937, before Indian independence, when the Indian National Congress passed a resolution declaring its support for the Palestinian national movement. But her lone voice was drowned out by the others.

Photo: Twitter

Yet amid the din of rabble-rousers crying hoarse for Israel to crush the terrorists, a cartoon image caught my eye. It showed a man dying in hospital. Too sick to move and only able to breath with the support of oxygen, he nevertheless held up a placard saying #IndiastandswithIsrael.

It is a poignant lesson of our times that hate somehow finds oxygen even when our lungs can’t.

Siddharth Kapila is a lawyer-turned-writer presently working on a travel memoir on Hindu pilgrimage sites.

Trump’s Middle East ‘Peace Plan’ Is a Step Towards Institutionalising Apartheid

The ‘deal of the century’ demands that Palestinians officially accept that Israel has no responsibility for its inaugural act of ethnic cleansing and all brutalities on Palestinians since.

The Trump Peace Plan unveiled on January 28, represents the formal institutionalisation of an Israeli apartheid state. Most other governments – regardless of whether they enthusiastically or more cautiously welcomed the Plan or even criticised or rejected it – have invariably stated that, given the absence of the Palestinian side in the process of forming this Plan, a negotiated ‘final settlement’ is still needed.

This completely misses the point. What has happened is the logical culmination of a process of US unilateralism that began with the Trump presidency which declared undivided Jerusalem as Israel’s capital; endorsed the permanent annexation of the Golan Heights; cut off funding to the Palestinians; and now put forward this new plan.

This is the ‘final settlement’. It is not a proposal put forward for discussion and substantive changes through further negotiation but an ultimatum.

To grasp what the real purpose of this plan is and also who are its intended audiences – certainly not the leadership of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) which is why they were deliberately excluded in the first place – the plan itself must be dissected. It is followed by a brief survey of certain official government responses including that of India. This is because this plan, through the creation of irreversible new ‘facts on the ground’, also aims to dramatically deepen Palestine’s international isolation.

The plan

The Trump plan declared that the main illegal Israeli settlements that are in the West Bank (minus a few outliers) must now become permanent and, sure enough, within hours of Washington saying this, Netanyahu announced the formal annexation of 131 Jewish settlements. What will soon follow is the annexation of the Jordan River valley of some 80,000 hectares of agricultural land where some 65,000 Palestinians and 11,000 illegal Israelis settlers currently live.

Also read: In 10 Points, What the ‘Israel Model’ Is and Why It’s Bad for India

During the course of its longstanding occupation of the West Bank, over 70% of its water resources were routinely diverted to the settlements and to Israel behind the Wall. This process will be further exacerbated in the valley so as to force out the Palestinian farming families earning their livelihood there.

According to the new plan the Palestinians will get, area-wise. a substantially reduced set of separate Bantustans connected by roads, bridges and tunnels (also to Gaza) but with no security control over the new boundaries of this truncated and internally fragmented ‘Swiss cheese’ of a so-called state. This entity will be fully de-militarised with its air space also fully under Israeli military control.

Maps from Trump’s vision for Israel and Palestine.

The Palestinian ‘Right of Return’ – incidentally a fundamental human right – to previous homes/lands for Palestinians expelled and displaced since 1948 must be renounced. It is crucial to understand why this is so pernicious a condition. This ROR has a practical dimension and a political-symbolic one.

The former is negotiable, namely how many actually do or want to return or are given compensation and rights of residency elsewhere.

But the latter dimension is far more important and must be upheld. There can be no future establishment of an enduring peace or the transformation of the existing hostile relationship between Israel and Palestinians unless Israel admits that it’s ethnic cleansing of 1948 was a great injustice and wrong.

There could have been no new beginning between Germany and Israel and Jewry if the former did not apologise and accept its moral guilt for the Holocaust. Similarly, South African apartheid had to be recognised as fundamentally unjust and immoral and needed to be ended before relations between whites and non-whites could start on a new footing.

The same holds true for future relations between Palestinians and Israeli Jews. Moreover, this plan also calls for the Palestinian side to drop all war crimes investigations against Israel including withdrawing those lodged in the International Criminal Court. So this ‘Deal of the Century’, which actually is a collusion between the US and the mainstream political parties of Israel, demands acceptance of not only its apartheid rule but that Palestinians officially acknowledge not only that Israel has no responsibility for its inaugural act of ethnic cleansing that created Israel in the first place, but for all the brutalities that have been imposed on the Palestinians since.

Watch | ‘Wide Angle’ Episode 13: Trump’s Jerusalem Announcement – The End Of The Mideast Peace Process?

The ‘twist’ in this plan is that there will be a four year waiting and a probation period for the Palestinian leadership to accept and come to terms with this new reality. Israel will freeze further annexations during this period provided the Palestinians ‘behave themselves’ i.e., pose no ‘security threat’ to Israel which will be the sole arbiter of whether or not Palestinians have behaved properly.

File Photo: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas heads a Palestinian cabinet meeting in the West Bank city of Ramallah July 28, 2013. Photo: Reuters/Issam Rimawi/Pool/File Photo

In return for this complete surrender and after the end of this period, Trump has promised to organise $50 billion for Palestinian development no doubt with the support of other allies in the Middle East and Europe who can be expected to fall in line with the new arrangement once the Palestinian leadership itself falls into line. Otherwise, there will be no Palestinian state, period.

During these four years, more pressure will be put on both the Palestinians and its ostensible allies among Arab states while diplomatic criticism from other governments can be expected to fade further from its existing levels of already feeble inconsequences. Of course, the divide between Hamas and Fatah must be retained.

For the former in Gaza, more punishment for this most densely populated and impoverished region but also the sustenance of its status as the world’s largest open-air prison subject to regularised aerial bombing and shelling. For Fatah or other aspiring leaders in the West Bank, accepting the transition from being since Oslo, subcontractors of the occupation in an economy substantially fuelled by international aid, and having some limited degree of autonomy to carry out municipal rule and line your own pockets through corruption, to now becoming mere puppets in a new dispensation. Even apartheid rule requires local collaborators.

Audiences and responses

Trump’s plan which has long been in the making, apart from what it has done for the more extreme forms of Israeli Zionism, has really had three other targets in mind. One, of course, is the anticipated political fallout in the US itself. The second pertains to the Middle East, North Africa (MENA) region and especially its key actual or potential allies. The third is its European, NATO and other strategic and tactical allies among which India can certainly be counted.

Within the US this plan will have decisively shifted the goalposts. It puts an end to the waffling by previous US administrations, whether Republicans or Democrats, willing to mouth pieties about respecting international law and recognising that Palestine had a case while deliberately being blind to Israeli transgressions and continuing to give it material, military and diplomatic-political support whenever it really mattered.

Also read: Ein Rashash: A Typical West Bank Morning Under Illegal Israeli Occupation

Sanders and Warren the two candidates in the Democratic primaries have voiced their rejection but the mainstream in the Democratic Party may voice reservations about whether this will work but will not buck the new political wisdom in Israel itself and will eventually accommodate itself to this plan as it already has to all the other unilateral steps taken by Trump regarding Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. The safer option currently is to concentrate on the upcoming elections, talk about Trump diverting attention from the impeachment proceedings and keep talking about Israeli security needs. Biden, the Democrat frontrunner, in his response to Trump, failed to make any reference to the Palestinians.

Benny Gantz (left), leader of Blue and White party, at an election campaign event in Ashkelon, Israel, April 3, 2019, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu smiling at a polling station in Jerusalem, April 9, 2019. Photo: Reuters/Amir Cohen/File photo, Ariel Schalit/Pool via Reuters

In Israel, the claim that this plan was mainly meant to be a diversion needed by Netanyahu given his bribery charges, does not really hold water. Washington can count on his rivals like Gantz and the other parties in whatever ruling coalition finally emerges after the March elections, to fully endorse what has been done. It is noticeable that Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain and the UAE have been careful not to condemn the plan and have even suggested that the Palestinians might take it into consideration in their negotiations.

For formality’s sake, these countries have also gone along with the Arab League’s latest joint resolution rejecting the deal. Egypt values its close relationship with the US (a huge donor) and after its separate Peace treaty with Israel has had no quarrel with it. The US knows that it is Iran, not Israel that most worries these Arab states and that the gulf between these princely and dictatorial regimes and the Arab street on the Israel-Palestine issue has always been very wide. There is even the possibility that over the next four years, as mentioned earlier, these governments, that also bankroll the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) and Fatah, could also play their part in pushing the latter to accept what now seems unacceptable.

Britain’s Boris Johnson, as expected, has welcomed the plan while France has also done so saying it will study it carefully. Russia, needing to balance between two friendships with Iran and Israel respectively, has also taken the easy way out saying it needs to study the plan leaving it to Germany, the other main heavyweight in Europe, to somewhat surprisingly, strike a more sceptical note doubting that it can be the basis for a sustained peace.

A number of politicians belonging to the centre and rightwing parties have been aggressively critical of it. Nonetheless, the German government is buying time saying its official position will come after consultations with European partners.

So where does India fit in? Ever since the Congress government of Rao established full diplomatic relations with Israel, the Indian stance has been one of having ever closer cooperation at various levels with Israel while paying lip service and money to the Palestinian cause. With the advent of the first and subsequent NDA governments, the Sangh’s ideological admiration for Zionism has led it to go further. Where once a positive Indian vote for UN resolutions in favour of Palestine was de rigeur, now there has been the occasional abstention.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shakes hands with his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi during a meeting with Indian community in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv. Credit: PTI

It was during Vajpayee’s time that there was the first-ever visit of a sitting Israeli Premier, Ariel Sharon. Modi was the first Indian premier to officially visit Israel. New Delhi’s response this time was more timid than that of Germany abandoning even the formality of not annoying the PNA leadership by stating that the two sides “engage with each other including on the recent proposal put forward by the United States.” Given that this was preceded by a three-year silence by India on Trump’s declaration that undivided Jerusalem must be Israel’s capital, no one should be surprised at this implicit endorsement of apartheid. After all, why condemn that which happens abroad if something similar is what is desired on the home front!

Also read: Indian Diplomat Wants ‘Israel Model’ in Kashmir, Sets Off Controversy

As for Palestine?

As for the Palestinians, Mahmud Abbas has announced that the PNA has withdrawn from the Oslo Accords – which in any meaningful sense was already long dead – and will cut its security ties with Israel and the US. It remains to be seen what will follow from this.

Does Fatah now say Israel must do all internal policing and local political decision-making regarding everyday concerns thereby voluntarily giving up whatever powers and authority it currently has? Will it give up its call for a two-state solution and now talk of full and equal democratic rights for all in a one state Israel? Will it seriously seek unity and share authority with Hamas when in the past it has colluded with the US and Israel to deny Hamas the fruits of election victory in the West Bank, and when this will alienate many European governments which it might still want for material and political-diplomatic reasons? Past experience does not suggest any such dramatic stiffening of the spine of the current PNA leadership.

The great tragedy of a remarkable people – the Palestinians – is that they have never had the kind of leadership they have deserved. But it is their indomitable will and their relentless pursuit of justice across generation after generation that continues to prevent forces far more powerful from finishing off for good this amazing Palestinian struggle. What then might be the way forward in these dark times? Some comments here may not be entirely amiss.

First, the only realistic longer-term goal is for a fully democratised one state solution with equal rights for all its citizens regardless of religious or ethnic affiliation.

Second, a new and younger and more united leadership, which recognises how much of a dead-end both Fatah and Hamas have been, must emerge. This may not be that far off.

A boy plays in the Israeli settlement of Vered Yericho in the occupied West Bank, on September 11, 2019 Photo: Reuters/ Ronen Zvulun

Third, further democratise the internal structure of the Palestine Legislative Council by giving due and substantial representation to those chosen by Palestinian refugees outside of the occupied territories (OTs) and in this way forge a much wider and deeper unity that will be far more effective both within and without the OTs.

Fourth, Palestinian success cannot be separated from the question of what happens in Iran and the Arab world as a whole. This region remains dominated by one or the other form of anti-democratic and dictatorial rule. The overthrow of one significant power in the region and its replacement by an enduring democratic order will dramatically reignite the prospects of achieving greater justice for the Palestinians themselves and for further democratic upheaval in the region. Neither Israel nor the US can stop this once it reaches a critical level of intensity. These two struggles must be connected. For too long the Palestinian leadership has taken the failed route of ignoring this wider democratic struggle so as to secure largesse and feeble political-diplomatic support from repressive regimes.

Also read: In Palestine for Three Hours, Modi Drops Indian Support for ‘United’, ‘Viable’ Palestinian State

Fifth, pursue a completely non-violent resistance to the brutalities of Israel. This may reduce but it will not stop Israeli brutalities. However, it will also generate much wider support among the world’s ordinary public to carry out the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign and put much more pressure on their respective governments to penalise and censure Israel in various ways. In the longer run, Israel fears this more than any armed resistance.

Nelson Mandela was once asked when he knew that apartheid’s end was forthcoming. His answer needs to be treasured. He said that he knew this would happen once he and others in the anti-apartheid struggle had realised that they had caught the ‘moral imagination of enough people’. He did not say all the people or most of the people but only of ‘enough’. As long as the Palestinian people continue to remain unbowed and intransigent in their struggle for justice, despite all betrayals by leaders and governments, that time will come!

Achin Vanaik is a writer and social activist, a former professor at the University of Delhi and Delhi-based Fellow of the Transnational Institute, Amsterdam. He is the author of The Painful Transition: Bourgeois Democracy in India and The Rise of Hindu Authoritarianism.

Palestinian Ambassador Urges India to Pressure Israel on Al-Aqsa Security Crackdown

For ten days now, Jerusalem has seen the worst bloodshed in years spurred by Israel’s decision to install metal detectors at the entrance to the mosque.

Palestinian ambassador to India Adnan M.A. Abualhayjaa condemned Israel’s security crackdown at the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. Credit: Mallory Moench

New Delhi: Adnan M.A. Abualhayjaa, the Palestinian ambassador to India, on Wednesday urged the Indian government to push Israel to reverse its security crackdown at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque after more than a week of violent protests.

For ten days now, Jerusalem has seen the worst bloodshed in years spurred by Israel’s decision to install metal detectors at the entrance to the Old City’s holy compound. The violence has resulted in at least six deaths, both Israeli and Palestinian.

Abualhayjaa’s statement followed a questioned shift in India’s long-standing support for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict after Prime Minister Narendra Modi broke with tradition by not visiting Ramallah, the Palestinian capital, on his trip to Israel in early July.

“India was leading other countries to support Palestinian people’s rights. What we are expecting is that the government is to continue positive attitudes,” Abualhayjaa said at the press conference held at the Palestinian embassy here.

“With the relation between this government and Israel, I could say that they could interfere in the situation, especially when they knew very well what is the Palestinian cause and what are their rights in the occupied Palestinian territories,” he said.

Abualhayjaa clarified that he does not think India is encouraging Israel’s policy. He emphasised that Modi reaffirmed his support for Palestinian sovereignty and a two-state solution when Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas visited India in May, and encouraged India to continue its positive role in the region.

“India could coordinate with other countries to force Israel to follow international law and find a solution,” Abualhayjaa said.

Israeli soldiers fired tear gas at Palestinians to disperse them after Friday Prayer on a street outside Jerusalem’s Old City. Credit: Ammar Awad/ Reuters

Situation could become ‘more than an intifada’

The Al-Aqsa mosque compound, referred to as Haram al-Sharif by Muslims and the Temple Mount by Jews, has been contested by the two religions since Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967. Tensions reignited on July 14 when three Arab Israeli citizens killed two Israeli police officers near the compound, prompting the Israeli government to install metal detectors at the mosque.

Thousands of Palestinians protested by praying outside the mosque on July 21, resulting in violent confrontations with Israeli security forces. So far hundreds have been injured and six killed, including three Palestinians and three Israelis.

Israel removed the metal detectors on Tuesday in favour of CCTV cameras and introducing a future plan for installing security cameras with face recognition software. However, Palestinian leaders, including Abualhayjaa, rejected the measures.

“The leaders of Al-Aqsa have told people that no one will go to pray before we will be sure that everything has returned to the situation before July 14,” Abualhayjaa said on Wednesday as he stood against a looping backdrop of images from the clashes, including a video of an Israeli soldier kicking a Palestinian worshipper.

Jordan currently serves as the custodian of the site, where Jews are not allowed to enter, but Jewish right-wing groups such as The Temple Mount Faithful are pushing to change that policy.

“Al-Aqsa is a Muslim place and there is nothing after that,”Abualhayjaa said. “And we will fight forever for that.”

He added that if security measures were not lifted, the region would only see increasing violence that “might be more than an intifada.”

“Israel is pushing for a religious war to change the situation from political conflict to religious conflict and war,” he said. “No one knows if it starts as religious, how it will be ended.”

Backstory: For the Media Should Palestine Matter?

A fortnightly column from The Wire’s public editor.

Why did the media forget about Palestine during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Israel? Credit: Reuters

Amnesia is useful for governments seeking to make their foreign policy an extension of domestic policy, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi deliberate avoidance of Ramallah during his recent three-day visit to Israel should cause little surprise. The question is whether the Indian media can afford such forgetfulness without seriously jeopardising their important, if ancillary, function of being archivist and context setter.

During a visit that was almost universally hailed as “historic,” there was ironically very little history in the media coverage. Almost every major media house had sent a correspondent to Tel Aviv to capture every angle of the Modi-Netanyahu prime ministerial clinch, yet the information churned out was status quoist and uniformly euphoric. The very fact that it took an Indian prime minister 70 years to visit this country did not lead to the logical question: Why? Almost no one paused to consider that the land on which they stood had once had a different habitation and name.
Edward Said, one of the most eloquent defenders of the idea of Palestine, had told me during an interview in December 1997, about his experience of going back to Palestine, the land of his birth: “All these places which I hadn’t visited in 50 years I remembered quite clearly: a staircase, the shape of a door, the curve in a street, things of that sort. What impressed me was the total transformation. I mean Tiberius, which is a town on the Sea of Galilee, which was mostly an Arab town, didn’t have a single Arab now. They have all been driven out. It’s a Jewish town that looks like Miami. It’s a different country. It’s a very strange feeling, where your country is there and built on top of it is another country. And the new one completely denies the existence of the first.”

It is in this project of erasure that much of the media coverage on the recent Modi trip seemed to be complicit, and for reasons ranging from political realism – bringing India-Israel relations out of the closet, as one editorial approvingly endorsed – to plain ignorance. After all, as so many talking heads on television have informed us while celebrating the delightful “de-hyphenation of Israel-Palestine,” if many Arab countries have themselves turned their backs on Palestine, why on earth must India carry on investing it with its attention?

Why indeed? Well, for one, India is still a democracy. In a few weeks from now we will be celebrating 70 years of freedom and it will occasion many a government driven anniversary gig. Yet that freedom would not have been possible without the decolonisation struggle and commitment to democratic values that had preceded it. This is also why a newly-independent India had sought common cause with other countries battling colonial occupation, including militarised colonial occupation as in the case of Palestine. There was time when the Palestinian issue was understood to be important by society as a whole. It was a barometer of India’s political morality and opposition to totalitarianism and apartheid where ever it was practiced, not as a “Muslim issue” in the way one expert, sympathetic to Israel, framed it to The Wire: “The Congress and the Muslim League perceived the anti-imperialist Palestinian cause as a way to win over Indian Muslims whose support they were competing for and to unite Indian Muslims with the resistance against the British. Supporting Palestine was also a method of leveraging India’s interests in the Middle East” (‘India, Israel and Palestine: A Triangle That Does Not Sum Up’, July 2).

While a comprehensive view of the nature of the state of Israel as an occupying power has proved elusive in most recent media coverage, including in The Wire, there were significant glimpses and fact checks to be gleaned from the pieces put out on this portal. An interview with Daniel Carmon, Israel’s ambassador to India (‘Interview: Will Modi Find ‘Shared Values’ in Israel or a State Giving up on Democracy?’, July 4), posed some uncomfortable questions, including on the stagnation of the peace process between Israel and Palestine, and the continuous building of settlements in the Occupied Territories against international law. Interviews, by their very nature, are self-limiting, with interlocutors coming up sooner or later against the requirements of propriety and deference to the guest being interviewed, but it would be fair to say that this interview went far beyond the puff encounters that had appeared on other media platforms and even occasionally had Carmon seeking to change the subject.

Israeli’s wizardry in making arid regions bloom and utilising water in optimum ways, as well as its generosity (well paid for, without doubt) in sharing the technology with India has figured hugely in the reportage from Tel Aviv, but not many cared to find out where much of the water Israel consumes actually comes from. A small infographic, carried with the piece ‘Focus on Water and Terror as Modi Makes Israel India’s 31st ‘Strategic Partner’ (July 6), contained some interesting data. Ramallah gets more rainfall than London, but a disproportionately larger percentage of the water from its aquifers go to servicing the Israeli population in comparison to the Palestinians. You can call it the logic of settler colonialism or just plain theft, as the Palestinians do, but most Indian journalists are not going to say that.

It is also possible that many Indian journalists who had visited Tel Aviv this time to report on the Modi visit would have seen The Wall, but this piece of architecture in the West Bank was conspicuously missing from the general reportage – not even a two-minute piece to camera item. Consequently, its significance as a means of segregation and sequestration used against the Palestinians on their own land ended up being airbrushed from the coverage (‘Border Walls Aren’t ‘Fixing’ Anything – But the World Is Building Them Anyway’, July 5).

Each of these insights, if they had made their way into the coverage of the recent visit of Modi to Israel would have helped the Indian public, many among whom have come into adulthood at a time when India’s foreign policy hardly figures in social discourse, understand why this visit is far from being a matter of celebration and actually compromises India’s national interest. As one perceptive analysis that appeared in The Wire put it, it signalled to the world that “India is now eager to be seen in public embrace of a state that celebrates not just colonial occupation and oppression but also the regular use of violence in contravention of international law against civilians” (‘There are Dangers for India in Modi’s Embrace of Israel‘, July 4).

Fan mail for Vinod Dua keeps coming into my inbox. Take this one from I. Mukaramjahan Pirjaed, who expresses his admiration for Dua’s “dareful anchoring”. He adds that he himself is a “Hindustani, living in India, educated in Bharat and a strong believer of India’s great ganga -jamni culture”. Now that makes me a fan of the fan!

Meanwhile, Gaurav Pradhan likes the content being shared on The Wire and wants to know if there are any plans to start podcasting it.

In the piece by Safieh Shah, ‘The Death of a Sanitary Worker in Pakistan’ (June 15), the date of when the piece had originally appeared in ‘Global Voices’, was incorrectly given as March 10, 2014. Actually, the worker – Irfan Masih – had succumbed to his (very) preventable health challenges far more recently and the original piece had appeared on June 13, 2017.

Write to publiceditor@cms.thewire.in

Modi Embraces Israel: Camaraderie in Turbulent Times

There is little doubt that Modi and Netanyahu bonded warmly during the visit. But, the relationship remains firmly anchored in defence supplies and a few joint ventures, with limited transfer of technology to India.

There is little doubt that Narendra Modi and Benjamin Netanyahu bonded warmly during the visit. But, the relationship remains firmly anchored in defence supplies and a few joint ventures, with limited transfer of technology to India.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi hugs with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as they deliver joint statements during an exchange of co-operation agreements ceremony in Jerusalem, July 5, 2017. Credit: Reuters/Amir Cohen

Narendra Modi’s visit to Israel was always going to be an important part of his diplomatic engagement as prime minister. Hence, not surprisingly, Modi’s sojourn in Israel from July 4-6 has seen writers struggling with epithets: “historic” has been most commonly used, followed by “ground-breaking,” “historic partnership” and “momentous”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a fit of extraordinary exuberance, spoke of the bilateral relationship as a “marriage made in heaven”. It may be noted that Netanyahu is not a great wordsmith – during a visit to China in March this year, he had similarly described Sino-Israeli ties as “a marriage made in heaven”.

This was the first visit by an Indian prime minister to Israel and marked the silver jubilee of the establishment of diplomatic ties in 1992. It was also the first time that an Indian leader went to Israel without visiting Ramallah, the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority. This affirmed the bilateral character of the visit and that India’s ties with Israel were important in themselves and need not be linked any longer with the Palestine issue – the latter had already been addressed separately with the visit of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to India in May.

Though Modi’s visit to Israel is the first visit by an Indian prime minister, several high-level interactions have taken place in recent years. These include visits by then home minister L.K. Advani in 2000, former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam in 2008, home minister Rajnath Singh in 2014, President Pranab Mukherjee in 2015 and external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj in 2016. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon came to India in 2003, while defence minister Moshe Yaalon was in India in February 2015.

Several observers have noted the ideological affinity between the BJP-led government in India and the right-wing leadership in Israel. Modi had been to Israel earlier as the chief minister of Gujarat in 2006, at a time when several western countries were uneasy about his presence after the post-Godhra riots. This interaction had cemented ideological and economic ties, with considerable Israeli investments in Gujarat. Commentators have spoken of a “romance” between Israel and Modi.

Contrary to expectations, as prime minister, Modi gave priority to engagement with the Muslim countries of West Asia, covering the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Qatar in the first part of his diplomatic forays in the region. Now, with the visit to Israel his interaction with West Asia is complete.

Curtain-raisers to the visit

While the visits to the Muslim countries were an initial getting-to-know experience with new countries and leaders, the ideological connection and the earlier personal interaction imparted a special resonance to the visit to Israel. Even before Modi landed in Tel Aviv, both countries had made a major effort to create the best possible atmosphere.

A week earlier, India abstained on a vote in the UN Human Rights Commission that sought to condemn Israel for its harsh assault on Gaza in 2014, in which nearly 3000 Palestinians were killed in actions that were described as war crimes by an inquiry commission. In return, an Israeli spokesman declared full solidarity with India in the face of cross-border terrorist attacks from Pakistan, and added for good measure that Israel would not seek a quid pro quo for this fulsome support. In fact, the Israeli official saw a clear parallel between the challenges from terrorism faced by the two countries and asserted that both had the right to defend themselves.

Both countries shared the horror of the carnage wreaked by Pakistan-sponsored terrorists in Mumbai in November 2008. This is poignantly personified by Israeli national Moshe Holtzberg whose parents were killed in the attack on the Jewish centre in Mumbai nine years ago. Modi had a warm encounter with the now 11-year old Moshe in Israel.

Curtain-raisers in the Indian and Israeli media before Modi’s arrival applauded the remarkable progress in bilateral ties since diplomatic ties were established 25 years ago. Defence cooperation has been the centre-piece of the relationship: Indian purchases of defence equipment and systems over the last ten years are valued at about $10 billion. India is Israel’s number one market for defence supplies, accounting for 41% of Israel’s exports, while Israel is India’s number three supplier, after Russia and the US, and has a share of over 7% in India’s imports.

Background briefings highlighted Israel’s prowess in defence technology, particularly its Delilah cruise missile, assault rifle, anti-missile systems, drones and interception software, seeing in defence cooperation the cement that bound the two countries. Israeli media reported that likely deals to be concluded during the Indian prime minister’s visit could include the purchase of 8,000 Spike anti-tank missiles, worth about $500 million, from Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defence Systems, making 2017 a record year in terms of Israeli weapons sales to India.

Last year, India had signed two large deals with Israel: one, worth almost $2 billion, includes the land-based version of the Barak 8 air defence system, as well as the naval version to be installed on the Indian navy’s aircraft carrier. The second deal, worth $630 million, was for the installation of the modified Barak 8 systems on four navy ships, which had been developed as a joint project between India and Israel. Other areas of cooperation include joint air exercises and protection of coastal and offshore facilities.

According to press reports, both countries put in considerable preparatory work to obtain substantial tangible achievements. From India, seven visits of officials from different departments took place, while eleven Israeli ministries worked to prepare a roadmap of joint economic undertakings. Before Modi’s arrival, the Israeli cabinet approved a 23-page document with several bilateral initiatives and a budget of about $80 million.

Officials in both countries have insisted that bilateral interactions were much more diversified, and covered agriculture, trade and water management. An Indo-Israel agriculture action plan for 2015-18 is already operational, and 15 of the proposed 26 centres of excellence in agriculture are being developed in India with Israel’s help to make the latest technology available to Indian farmers.

The visit

In the event, the visit fully lived up to the hype generated on both sides earlier. Netanyahu greeted Modi at the airport in Hindi, while Modi reciprocated in Hebrew. The two leaders then cemented personal ties with smiles, laughs and at least seven bear hugs. Netanyahu described his encounter with Modi as a union of hearts and minds and, in a dramatic flourish, said, “India and Israel are changing our world and may be changing parts of the world”. Modi responded by referring to “a new chapter in our ties” and “new horizons of engagement”.

Regarding defence cooperation, the joint statement was relatively muted – it highlighted Israel’s commitment to be part of India’s Make in India initiative. It referred to cooperation in high technology, trade and investments, and affirmed a “strategic partnership in water and agriculture,” reflecting the confidential nature of defence agreements and emphasising that the relationship went beyond defence to other important areas. The visit also yielded agreements in areas of satellite technology, water and agriculture, and the setting up of a $40 million innovation fund.

In public remarks, the two leaders spoke of what brought them together. Modi noted that both countries lived in “complex geographies,” replete with “strategic threats to regional peace and security”; this highlighted the need “to protect our strategic interests and cooperate to combat growing radicalisation and terrorism”. Netanyahu described the Mumbai attacks as a “horrible terrorist attack” and stressed the need for the two countries to cooperate closely in counter-terrorism.

Reality checks

There is little doubt that Modi and Netanyahu bonded warmly during the visit, perhaps even as “kindred spirits,” as some observers saw it. But, the relationship remains firmly anchored in defence supplies and a few joint ventures, with limited transfer of technology to India. Joint exercises of the three services arms will be useful and dialogue on strategy and tactics will be a valuable exchange of experiences.

But it is important to note that Israel still meets only 7% of India’s defence imports, with Russia providing between 60-70%. The defence relationship with Israel is at best transactional in character, meeting gaps in niche areas in terms of India’s requirements.

Beyond this, India and Israel have little in common in terms of perceptions, priorities, approaches and ends.

Israel continues to see itself as beleaguered in West Asia and has shaped a unique relationship with various parts of the US establishment that provides it full support for its uncompromising and aggressive approach in regional matters, particularly in addressing the aspirations of the Palestinian people. Israel does everything possible to avoid looking at the Palestinian issue – it is creating new realities on the ground through a robust expansion of settlements in the occupied territories and repeatedly discrediting Palestinian interlocutors and undermining the influence of even moderate Palestinian leaders.

And, then, periodically it resorts to fierce and cruel armed action against the Palestinian and other Arab neighbours, inflicting horrific death and destruction that some of its own citizens have seen as war crimes. Israel asserts that it is threatened by terror – but, in West Asia it is seen as the principal source of state-sponsored terrorist violence. Israeli violence in West Asia and its obdurate approach in the region have played a major role giving credibility and following to extremist movements in the region.

Israeli affinity to Pakistan

India’s experience with extremist violence has been very different. India has been afflicted by state-sponsored jihadi violence organised by Pakistan through state resources and militant groups organised, indoctrinated, armed and trained by its armed personnel. Thus, from the Indian perspective, Israel and Pakistan, in their respective regions are state-sponsors of terrorist violence, one espousing Zionist extremism, the other promoting its Islamic version, jihad.

This affinity between Israel and Pakistan emerges from the founding of these two states under British sponsorship. In his book Muslim Zion: Pakistan as a Political Idea, the distinguished scholar Faisal Devji saw a parallel between the Zionist movement for Israel and the Muslim nationalist movement for Pakistan. Both movements sought to mobilise widely dispersed “minority” communities against perceived persecution from the majority, and placed before this “religious’ nationality” the vision of a homeland in an “alien geography, without a necessary reference to shared blood and a rootedness in the soil”, which had till then constituted the bases of nationalism in Europe.

Originating in the same idea, Israel and Pakistan continue to share many attributes – both subordinate the idea of territory to religious identity, though Israel has come to attach a messianic value to its “sacred,” “promised” land (whose boundaries remain undefined), while Pakistan is convinced that its nationhood would not be complete without the acquisition of Kashmir (not fully defined, but vaguely referring to the valley).

Both promote national consolidation on the fear of eradication by hostile neighbours and larger global conspiracies. Pakistan’s malaise, like that of Israel, lies in the fact that religion has overwhelmed citizenship, making both nations narrow and exclusive and prone to messianic intolerance and violence against the “Other”. It is good to recall that India, with its secular and pluralistic order, has nothing in common with Pakistan or, for that matter, with Israel, and there is little that Israel can do to boost our resources or capabilities in our struggle against extremism.

India’s problem with agitations in Jammu and Kashmir is also qualitatively different from the Israeli situation. The state of Israel was set up in territory that already had Arab residents for over two thousand years, after the Jews had been expelled into the diaspora by the Romans. The new state consolidated itself through military success in 1948 and later held its own in 1967.

It now has a few million Palestinians in the territories occupied by it, who enjoy no legal status as citizens or constitutionally-guaranteed human rights. Instead, they suffer discrimination and are frequently at the receiving end of violence, both from state agencies and the settler community that is illegally occupying their land and expanding its space with full state support.

India, on the other hand, saw Jammu and Kashmir legally accede to India, with the full support of its people, who are now its citizens and enjoy all legal rights bestowed by the national constitution. Yes, there are expressions of dissatisfaction from the local people with various aspects of local governance and the role of central authorities, but these are domestic issues involving the state and its citizens and are to be addressed within the framework of India’s laws and constitution.

Thus, in Jammu and Kashmir local dissidence has no parallel with the situation in Israel’s occupied territories; nor can the Indian state see its own citizens as the “Other” and follow Israel in inflicting the harshest possible violence upon them. India’s priority concern is to address the genuine grievances of its people and bring them back into the mainstream, while that of Israel is to make living conditions in the occupied territories so onerous that the Palestinians leave their homes and join their refugee brethren in neighbouring states. There is just no similarity between the two situations that could create the basis for any serious cooperation in the area of counter-terrorism.

A new vision for West Asia

Amidst the ongoing contentions and conflicts in West Asia, particularly the strategic rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the kingdom and Israel have located a common interest in working together against a common enemy, Iran.

The engagement between these unlikely comrades began with the US-initiated negotiations with Iran on the nuclear issue and have become stronger on account the support their anti-Iran posture enjoys from the Trump presidency. Israel has now publicly affiliated itself with the Saudi-led “Sunni” alliance, which has the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain as its principal members. Thus, Israel has extended full support to Saudi Arabia in its confrontation with Qatar.

Saudi Arabia has been careful to keep its interaction with Israel out of the public eye, projecting its engagements with Israel as academic exercises. However, given the hostility of public opinion to any progress in ties with Israel, the kingdom has emphasised the importance of pursuing the Arab Peace Initiative, first announced by then Crown Prince Abdullah in 2002 and then accepted as an “Arab” plan by the Arab League. This calls upon Israel to pursue the peace process with the Palestinians so that they have a viable sovereign state, the so-called “two-state solution”. In return, the Arab states will have normal diplomatic, political and economic ties with Israel.

This plan has been rejected by successive Israeli governments, though Israeli politicians out of office have seen some merit in it. With Trump in the White House, Israel is now seeking to put pressure upon the Saudi-led Sunni states to normalise ties with Israel, after which it will take up peace negotiations with the Palestinians. Nobody seriously believes that, with “normal” ties with some major Arab countries, Israel will have any incentive to pursue the peace process.

Hence, India should not see these developments as reflecting significant, even tectonic, changes in the regional strategic landscape. Its ties with the principal countries of the region – Saudi Arabia, Iran and Israel – should continue to remain bilateral and based on mutual interests. This is what was signalled and put in place after Modi visited three Arab countries and Iran early in his tenure; there is no call to join any grouping, particularly one that purportedly brings together Sunnis and Zionists against the Shia.

West Asia, in turmoil, is throwing up several new alignments that are responses to ongoing competitions. Israeli-Saudi Arabia engagement is one of them. But it has a unique significance – by reaching out to selected Arab neighbours, Israel seems to have finally recognised that it is an integral part of the West Asian geography and that its interests should not depend on the vagaries of US presidential predilections but on serious political engagement with nations in its neighbourhood. That alone will give it long-term security and yield substantial economic benefits.

India’s message to the contending nations of West Asia should be to emphasise the merits of engagement and camaraderie. With solid ties with all the West Asian countries, India’s voice will be heard with respect.

Talmiz Ahmad, a former diplomat, holds the Ram Sathe Chair for International Studies, Symbiosis International University, Pune.

India, Israel and Palestine: A Triangle That Does Not Sum Up

When Modi visits Israel on July 4, what should we expect? Will he refer to the Palestinian cause?

Prime Minister Narendra Modi with his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu in New York in 2014. Credit: PMO

It is the 50th year of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. It has been 50 years since Israel annexed the Palestinian territories of West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip following the Six Day Arab-Israeli War of June 1967.

During this time, Israel has tightened its hold over the territories, crushed Palestinian resistance and created hundreds of thousands of refugees. Its discriminatory policies affecting every area of Palestinian life have invited comparisons with the South African apartheid. However, UN resolutions condemning the occupation and Israeli settlements in the West Bank leave Israel unaffected, even as it relies on the continued support of the United States for its actions.

This is also the year that India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi will travel to Israel; the first Indian PM to do so. He will address a gathering of Jews of Indian origin in a community reception in Tel Aviv on July 5. Modi he will not visit Palestine.

Historically, India framed its relationship with Israel based on a priority accorded to Palestine. In 1936, Jawaharlal Nehru informed the Zionist emissary Immanuel Olsvanger that he could not tolerate imperialism in India or Palestine.

P.R. Kumaraswamy, professor of West Asian Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, writes that while anti-colonialism was an important aspect of India’s backing Palestine, there was a religious dimension to the matter. The Congress and the Muslim League perceived the anti-imperialist Palestinian cause as a way to win over Indian Muslims whose support they were competing for and to unite Indian Muslims with the resistance against the British. Supporting Palestine was also a method of leveraging India’s interests in the Middle East.

Road to Washington and arms access through Israel

Nevertheless, India established full diplomatic ties with Israel only in 1992, even though it had formally recognised Israel in 1950. The end of the Cold War in 1991 reconfigured world politics and established the United States as the sole superpower.

Vijay Prashad, professor of International Relations at Trinity College, says: “India’s road to Washington and arms lay through Israel. After India’s nuclear weapon tests in 1998, the US imposed economic and military sanctions. During the 1999 war with Pakistan, Israel supplied arms to India, which were American in any case. India under Indira Gandhi had already reached out to Israel in 1971 for arms despite absent diplomatic ties. The Palestine issue started getting sidelined long ago, while the Congress was in power.”

In 2009, following lobbying by US and Israeli governments, India diluted its stand on the Goldstone Report which showed the illegality of Israel’s blockade of Gaza and accused it of violating international law. The Congress expressed “reservations in making unqualified endorsement” of the report recommendations. According to Prashad, there is not much difference in the language used in 2009, and the language subsequently used by India for Israel’s attacks on Gaza in 2012 and 2014.

Then, for the first time in 2015, India abstained on a UNHRC resolution calling for a probe by the International Criminal Court into war crimes by Israel. It continued to abstain on the resolution in 2016 and 2017 as well. However, it has voted in favour of other UNHRC resolutions that criticised Israel on the expansion of settlements and the right of Palestinians to self-determination.

India justified abstaining on the grounds that the resolution referred to ICC of which India is not a member. But a report in The Telegraph showed that India voted at least twice in favour of UNHRC resolutions which refer to the ICC in the context of atrocities in Syria. India’s altered voting behaviour therefore caused speculation that India had changed its policies on Palestine which the government has denied.

India-Israel bonhomie under Modi

Undoubtedly, there is markedly more visible warmth between the two countries since 2014 when Modi was elected PM. High level visits to Israel by Home Minister Rajnath Singh, President Pranab Mukherjee and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj have already happened. While Singh did not visit Palestine, Mukherjee and Swaraj did so. During the Congress regime too, a steady stream of bilateral visits continued to Israel.

Interestingly, the first time that a senior Indian minister visited Israel was only in the year 2000, when the BJP was in power; and the minister was L.K. Advani. This is despite the fact that diplomatic relations were established since 1992 and Israel had been sending its presidents and prime ministers to India since 1993. The most recent visit being of President Reuven Rivlin in November 2016.

India and Israel have been cooperating in a range of areas including agriculture, water conservation, science and technology, trade and investment. India and Israel also view each other as victims of Islamist terror which complements Modi’s Hindutva background. But by far, the largest area of cooperation is in defense.

Israel’s defense industry bagged its biggest security contract in April 2017 with the state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries being awarded contracts worth $2 billion for providing medium range surface to air missile systems to the Indian Army. There are expectations of further arms deals when Modi visits Israel. It is no secret that India is currently the biggest importer of arms in the world while Israel is its second largest foreign supplier.

Where does Palestine stand?

Where does Palestine stand next to India-Israel bonhomie? When Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas visited India last month – his third state visit to the country – Modi mentioned India’s unwavering support to Palestine and for a two state solution. He also spoke of a ‘sovereign, independent, united and viable Palestine, co-existing peacefully with Israel.’

Even before Abbas’ visit, a Palestinian Authority official said that while India had the right to build relations with Israel, it should not come at the expense of support for Palestine.

How has that panned out? Is it possible for India to de-hyphenate its ties with the two countries, considering that one is an internationally condemned transgressor state and the other fighting for independence from it? India’s defense ties with Israel make this even more difficult.

Palestinian embassy officials in Delhi who monitor India-Israel ties have expressed unhappiness over the increasing defense relationship. A Der Spiegel investigation in 2014 showed that Israel invests significant sums into defense research and production. A good chunk of defense production is exported to countries like India. Defense export revenues in turn make it possible for the Israeli forces to sustain the military occupation of Palestine, inviting allegations that India is subsidising or underwriting the occupation.

When Modi visits Israel on July 4, what should we expect? Will he refer to the Palestinian cause? One can expect utterances about ‘the peace process and support for the two state solution. But it is doubtful he will go further – he is unlikely to raise the issue of the Palestinian prisoners’ hunger strike for example.

Any criticism of Israel’s human rights records at international forums could invite criticism of the Modi government’s own policies in Kashmir where he has militarily suppressed dissent and separatism. Neither Netanyahu nor Modi will embarrass each other; Netanyahu in particular would be eager to win over India for the longer term, especially as a voting ally at various human rights forums.

As Palestine observes its 50th year of Israeli occupation, hard strategic and military calculations define India’s national interest and colour its ties with Israel and Palestine.

Urvashi Sarkar is an independent journalist and a 2016 PARI Fellow.