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[Bregs]
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President Pranab Mukerjee’s proposed visit to Israel later this year has raised considerable dust in the left and left-of-centre circles. These unhappy voices contend the Congress would never have jettisoned a fundamental foreign policy tenet of keeping Israel at an arm’s distance to force it into a compromise with the Palestinians.Those currently swearing by the Nehruvian ideals chose to overlook that 2015 also marks the 65th anniversary of India permitting a local Jew to become Israel’s honorary counsel in (then) Bombay.
Two years later, Nehru upgraded this symbolic acknowledgment into a formal consulate. He then hung back from closer ties because a rapidly industrialising India was sourcing most of its oil from the Arabs. This factor is no longer at play. The final nail in the primacy of Arab oil as a geo strategy was struck with the discovery of shale oil. The Left got its hackles up first when Modi met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in New York in September last year (his subsequent interaction with its President Reuven Rivlin in Singapore slipped under the Left’s radar). Modi was hardly breaking fresh diplomatic ground.
Indira Gandhi followed her father’s policy of refraining from publicly interacting with Israeli leaders, although the two intelligence outfits maintained close contacts. Rajiv Gandhi became the first Indian Prime Minister to publicly meet his Israeli counterpart, at that time Shimon Peres, the principal military planner of the British-French-Israeli aggression in Suez in 1956, a morally indefensible adventure from any perspective. Israel racked up considerable moral debt all through the Congress years in Delhi than during the six years of Vajpayee government. It chipped in with military supplies during the 1962 and 1971 wars and was among the first to recognise Bangladesh as a sovereign nation.
At least half a dozen compelling reasons led the Narasimha Rao Government to establish full diplomatic ties with Israel.The two most-recent doses of Israeli military assistance came under different regimes. A BJP-led coalition was in power when Israel beefed up India’s arsenal during the Kargil war preceded by discrete supply of high end surveillance and communication interception equipment to help tip the balance of power in Kashmir, especially after footloose and battle hardened warriors from the Afghan war entered the fray. Israel was by India’s side after the Mumbai attacks in 2008 when the Congress was in power with the Left in a supporting role. At the end of the day, the volume of Israeli arms was large enough to temporarily dislodge Russia as India’s biggest arms supplier.
In between, Israel took a largely unknown and unprecedented step in state-to-state ties. It cancelled orders from Beijing for the supply of airborne early warning and control system (AWACS) radars and diverted them to India. Mounted on planes, they give extraordinary information about enemy activity in the skies. At New Delhi’s insistence, Israel partnered with Moscow in mounting them on Russian planes. India now buys the radars from the US but Israel welcomes Indian defence scientists and acquisition planners to its military warehouses and R & D outfits. There is a hefty measure of Israeli self interest.
Indian orders gave its military manufacturing volumes of scale and later opened the Indian market to conventional war fighting weapons like anti-ship missiles. Though India has racked up considerable debt of military and security gratitude, the progressives remain unconvinced because the Netanayhu regime has fast-tracked the construction of settlements for recently emigrated Jews on Palestinian land. They feel only a Hindu nationalist government could have been disregarded the Palestinian cause by abstaining from last month’s United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) vote.
The arithmetic showed India’s remoteness from the global political mainstream. Of the 47 countries, four besides India abstained, only the US was with Israel and the remaining 41 countries held on to their positions. Contrary to the fire and brimstone from a small section of social media activists on this vote, this also wasn’t the first time. Nearly a quarter of a century back, India had voted for the annulment of the UN Resolution 339 that equated Zionism with racism.
There was no Arab uproar then. There was none this July as well. By abstaining at the UNHRC, India was repeating its strategy at UN forums to protect larger national and security interests. India voted against Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board meeting in 2005 to keep American right-wingers from sabotaging the Indo-US nuclear agreement. It followed a similar course at UNHRC to show displeasure over Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse tie up with the Chinese in no-go areas from the Indian security establishment’s perspective. The Congress was in power on both occasions. The UNHRC abstention on Israel was also in line with this trend.
The end game was to checkmate a renewed Chinese effort to get at the dual use Israeli high tech market. After being rebuffed on AWACS, China seems to have a longer game plan. Its investments in Israel will soon touch the $ 5 billion mark and Chinese companies emerged as the largest stakeholders in its latest investment fund. India needs to keep them away from the Israeli defence market because this is the only exclusivity it enjoys in military hardware– China sources arms from Russia and sells their tweaked versions to Pakistan. This translates into 70 per cent of the arsenal of both countries which is common to Indian weaponry. Pakistan sources the remaining from the US and France who also supply them to India.
The unhinging of West Asia has spawned unlikely alliances. Saudi Arabia and Qatar arm anti-Assad rebels while Israel nurses the injured fighters on the Syrian border. In Yemen, anti-Houthi rebels receive intelligence and equipment from either of these antagonists. India has wisely kept its channels open with all sides. Undoubtedly, it must push for a two nation solution to the Israel-Palestine problem. The President’s tour programme might include a visit to Palestine if not to Jordan, temporary home to lakhs of Palestinian refugees. When Foreign Minister S M Krishna went to Israel, his deputy E. Ahamed visited Palestine.
The fact is all Central governments have tangoed with Israel. The only difference is BJP does it more publicly than the others to its left because it cares a little less about a public relations smokescreen on the issue. This is possibly because it does not have to bother about the Muslim vote. But neither did the Congress when it set about building bridges with Tel Aviv. If the Muslim vote drifted away from the Congress in some states, it was because of other reasons than Palestine.
India Tangoing with Israel, openly | idrw.org
Two years later, Nehru upgraded this symbolic acknowledgment into a formal consulate. He then hung back from closer ties because a rapidly industrialising India was sourcing most of its oil from the Arabs. This factor is no longer at play. The final nail in the primacy of Arab oil as a geo strategy was struck with the discovery of shale oil. The Left got its hackles up first when Modi met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in New York in September last year (his subsequent interaction with its President Reuven Rivlin in Singapore slipped under the Left’s radar). Modi was hardly breaking fresh diplomatic ground.
Indira Gandhi followed her father’s policy of refraining from publicly interacting with Israeli leaders, although the two intelligence outfits maintained close contacts. Rajiv Gandhi became the first Indian Prime Minister to publicly meet his Israeli counterpart, at that time Shimon Peres, the principal military planner of the British-French-Israeli aggression in Suez in 1956, a morally indefensible adventure from any perspective. Israel racked up considerable moral debt all through the Congress years in Delhi than during the six years of Vajpayee government. It chipped in with military supplies during the 1962 and 1971 wars and was among the first to recognise Bangladesh as a sovereign nation.
At least half a dozen compelling reasons led the Narasimha Rao Government to establish full diplomatic ties with Israel.The two most-recent doses of Israeli military assistance came under different regimes. A BJP-led coalition was in power when Israel beefed up India’s arsenal during the Kargil war preceded by discrete supply of high end surveillance and communication interception equipment to help tip the balance of power in Kashmir, especially after footloose and battle hardened warriors from the Afghan war entered the fray. Israel was by India’s side after the Mumbai attacks in 2008 when the Congress was in power with the Left in a supporting role. At the end of the day, the volume of Israeli arms was large enough to temporarily dislodge Russia as India’s biggest arms supplier.
In between, Israel took a largely unknown and unprecedented step in state-to-state ties. It cancelled orders from Beijing for the supply of airborne early warning and control system (AWACS) radars and diverted them to India. Mounted on planes, they give extraordinary information about enemy activity in the skies. At New Delhi’s insistence, Israel partnered with Moscow in mounting them on Russian planes. India now buys the radars from the US but Israel welcomes Indian defence scientists and acquisition planners to its military warehouses and R & D outfits. There is a hefty measure of Israeli self interest.
Indian orders gave its military manufacturing volumes of scale and later opened the Indian market to conventional war fighting weapons like anti-ship missiles. Though India has racked up considerable debt of military and security gratitude, the progressives remain unconvinced because the Netanayhu regime has fast-tracked the construction of settlements for recently emigrated Jews on Palestinian land. They feel only a Hindu nationalist government could have been disregarded the Palestinian cause by abstaining from last month’s United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) vote.
The arithmetic showed India’s remoteness from the global political mainstream. Of the 47 countries, four besides India abstained, only the US was with Israel and the remaining 41 countries held on to their positions. Contrary to the fire and brimstone from a small section of social media activists on this vote, this also wasn’t the first time. Nearly a quarter of a century back, India had voted for the annulment of the UN Resolution 339 that equated Zionism with racism.
There was no Arab uproar then. There was none this July as well. By abstaining at the UNHRC, India was repeating its strategy at UN forums to protect larger national and security interests. India voted against Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board meeting in 2005 to keep American right-wingers from sabotaging the Indo-US nuclear agreement. It followed a similar course at UNHRC to show displeasure over Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse tie up with the Chinese in no-go areas from the Indian security establishment’s perspective. The Congress was in power on both occasions. The UNHRC abstention on Israel was also in line with this trend.
The end game was to checkmate a renewed Chinese effort to get at the dual use Israeli high tech market. After being rebuffed on AWACS, China seems to have a longer game plan. Its investments in Israel will soon touch the $ 5 billion mark and Chinese companies emerged as the largest stakeholders in its latest investment fund. India needs to keep them away from the Israeli defence market because this is the only exclusivity it enjoys in military hardware– China sources arms from Russia and sells their tweaked versions to Pakistan. This translates into 70 per cent of the arsenal of both countries which is common to Indian weaponry. Pakistan sources the remaining from the US and France who also supply them to India.
The unhinging of West Asia has spawned unlikely alliances. Saudi Arabia and Qatar arm anti-Assad rebels while Israel nurses the injured fighters on the Syrian border. In Yemen, anti-Houthi rebels receive intelligence and equipment from either of these antagonists. India has wisely kept its channels open with all sides. Undoubtedly, it must push for a two nation solution to the Israel-Palestine problem. The President’s tour programme might include a visit to Palestine if not to Jordan, temporary home to lakhs of Palestinian refugees. When Foreign Minister S M Krishna went to Israel, his deputy E. Ahamed visited Palestine.
The fact is all Central governments have tangoed with Israel. The only difference is BJP does it more publicly than the others to its left because it cares a little less about a public relations smokescreen on the issue. This is possibly because it does not have to bother about the Muslim vote. But neither did the Congress when it set about building bridges with Tel Aviv. If the Muslim vote drifted away from the Congress in some states, it was because of other reasons than Palestine.
India Tangoing with Israel, openly | idrw.org
