Why Modi's Israel outreach will step up India's role in Central Asia
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s eight-day, six-nation blitzkrieg through Central Asia and Russia this week will take him to the BRICS and Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summits in Ufa, a city which came up around a fortress built by Ivan the Terrible in 1574.
Undeterred by the city’s history, he will meet Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on July 10 on the sidelines of the SCO summit. India, which like Pakistan currently has observer status in the SCO, is set to become a full member of this key security organisation founded in 2001 by Beijing and Moscow as a strategic counter to the West. For India, the SCO is part of an emerging diplomatic and security architecture in a crescent sweeping from energy-rich Central Asia to the Levant in west Asia.
In October, India hosts the African summit in New Delhi. Virtually every African country will be in attendance. Along with BRICS, full membership of the SCO and a deepening engagement with Latin America, India’s foreign policy is finally assuming cogent shape after years of incoherence.
Turning point
The real game-changer though is India’s Israel outreach. Last week, Prime Minister Modi received an urgent phone call from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The purpose: to request India’s vote against a resolution at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) condemning Israel over a UN fact-finding report on Tel Aviv’s Operation Protective Edge in Gaza. The report blames both Israel and Hamas for “war crimes” committed during the 50-day conflict in 2014.The Israelis say the report lacks balance. It fails, for example, to highlight the fact that Hamas provoked the conflict by firing more than 4,800 rockets on Israeli cities, killing six civilians. The report though does note, rightly, Israel’s disproportionate response which killed 1,462 Palestinian civilians.
None of this is new or startling. Israel and Hamas, aided by the Shia militia Hezbollah, have been battling each other for years. UN resolutions condemning Israel too are commonplace. The United States vetoes them routinely in the UN Security Council. The UNHRC resolution itself, which the US voted against, carries little weight. The UN report will now go to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) where any resolution implicating Israel will be vetoed by Washington.
What distinguished the resolution adopted by the UNHRC last Friday (July 3) was India’s abstention. Indian diplomats in Geneva and New York claim that this is India’s stated position whenever a resolution cities the International Criminal Court. India is not a signatory to the Rome statute that governs the court. The real reason though was more nuanced.
The entire European Union (EU), including France, Germany and Britain, voted for the resolution. Of the 47 UNHRC members, 41 voted in favour of the resolution, except the US which voted against it and India which, with four other countries (Paraguay, Kenya, Ethiopia and Macedonia), abstained.
India-Israel ties
The dynamic in India-Israel relations is changing rapidly. In November 2014 Rajnath Singh became the first home minister to visit Israel since LK Advani’s visit to Jerusalem in 2000. Prime Minister Modi had a low-key meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu in the US soon after his summit with US President Barack Obama in Washington. Indian-Israeli defence ties are deepening. Joint training programmes are underway. India has bought Spike anti-tank missiles from Israel in a $525 million deal. Defence equipment worth $2 billion (Rs. 12,700 crore) is in the pipeline. In the first high-level visit to India by an Israeli minister since 1992 (when India established diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv), Israel’s defence minister Moshe Ya’alon met Prime Minister Modi in February 2015 to strengthen security and defence ties.
Israel’s secret service agency Mossad and the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) are increasing intelligence sharing. With common enemies in the form of Islamist terrorists, there is much India can gain from close security cooperation with Tel Aviv. An official visit to Israel by Prime Minister Modi is likely to take place later this year. No Indian prime minister has visited Israel, making such a visit a foreign policy game-changer.
India has for decades been a staunch supporter of the Palestinians cause – and rightly so. It has, however, received nothing in return. Palestinian diplomats in New Delhi and elsewhere continue to support Pakistan over Kashmir. Other Arab nations too show solidarity with Islamabad over Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) while mouthing platitudes to soothe Indian diplomatic and public sentiment.
India’s abstention at the UNHRC is thus seen as a break from the past. The Israeli media has been quick to note this. Significantly, Prime Minister Modi has not yet visited any Middle East country. Israel is likely to be his first visit to the region. This will send a clear message: India’s decades-long support for Arab causes, especially the Palestinians’ historic right to a separate state, cannot be taken for granted.
Question of Palestine
And yet this will not imply blind support to Israel’s often cruel treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s policy of continuing to mandate new Israeli settlements in the West Bank has drawn sharp criticism even from Washington. Netanyahu has stubbornly refused to accept the two-state formula on the basis of the Annapolis accord of 2007 in which Palestine would be recognised as an independent state, co-existing with Israel whose security would in turn be guaranteed. More than 135 countries, including several in Europe, already recognise Palestine as an independent, sovereign state.
The complex history of Arab-Israel relations makes a lasting accord with the displaced Palestinians difficult in the face of Israel’s intransigence and sense of paranoia caused by its encirclement by hostile Arab states.
Palestine as a separate nation has a solid legal and civilisational foundation. In 1917, Article 7 of the League of Nations mandate stated that a new, separate Palestinian nationality be established. Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations gave internal legal status to the Palestinian people and territories earlier administered by the Ottoman Empire.How will the modern Palestinian tragedy play out? The Jews’ centuries-long persecution in Europe draws widespread sympathy. Israel, however, has a crucial weakness: a low birth rate. Meanwhile, the Palestinian population is exploding. Though confined to narrow strips of land, the number of Palestinians in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank (more than six million) has already exceeded the total Jewish population in Israel. If this trend continues, Israel’s long-term security could be compromised.
India’s expanding relationship with Israel represents a calibrated change in New Delhi’s approach to West Asia. For too long has Indian diplomacy trod the path of political correctness. As the prime minister this week deepens India’s ties in energy-surplus central Asia and ratifies India’s membership of the SCO, it is time to play a more robust role in one of the world’s most volatile regions.