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Israel meets South Asia: A visit of
import
By Stephen Blank
On
September 9, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will
begin a three day visit to India. This state visit has
three immediate goals for Israel and India. First of
all, it is expected that the formal agreement by Israel
to sell India the Phalcon AWACS system will be signed.
Second, it is also expected that there will be
discussions, if not announcements, of other major
Israeli arms sales to India. Third, the improvement of
these two governments' bilateral relationship will also
solidify ties among them and Washington, with important
implications for future developments in the Middle East
and South Asia.
Certainly there is the
expectation of further major arms sales, such as India's
interest in the joint US-Israeli Arrow missile defense
system. Israel has already sold it the accompanying
Green Pine Radar system, which is in use along the
border with Pakistan. Israel is also India's
second-largest supplier of weapons and Sharon's
entourage will include top Israeli defense executives,
undoubtedly with an eye to future major deals. These
defense deals will add to a bilateral trade that already
exceeds US$1.5 billion and will probably top $2 billion
in 2004.
These lucrative defense and trade
relations attest to similar threat perceptions, a high
degree of respect for each other's technological
capabilities and a shared desire to improve relations
with each other as well as with Washington. Israel also
hopes to solicit partners for its growing space and
military satellite program, and India would also be a
logical candidate for doing so.
Other
governments have also long accepted that one way to
improve ties with the United States is to engage in
positive relations with Israel. Thus, India is not alone
in appreciating the political value of relations with
Israel and its acknowledged military-technological
prowess.
President General Pervez Musharraf of
Pakistan earlier this summer similarly came to this
conclusion and announced that the time had come to
consider establishing diplomatic relations with Israel.
This step, a major challenge to a Pakistan, which
perceives itself essentially and first of all as an
Islamic state and society, naturally aroused a storm of
opposition, argument and discussion within the country.
Although low-level and unofficial contacts with
Jerusalem have existed previously, nothing like this has
ever been suggested. But now it is evidently believed
that such ties are vital to Pakistan's further
interests.
According to Jane's, Pakistani
sources are very concerned about the high level of
Israeli arms sales to India and hope to limit the scope
of this "emerging alliance" by recognizing Israel. They
evidently also hope to initiate a process of arms sales
from Israel to Pakistan. Third, they hope that this move
will play well in Washington and soften congressional
opposition to the Bush administration's pledges of $3
billion in aid through 2008. Israel naturally wants to
establish relations with so self-consciously a Muslim
country because it hopes that achieving such recognition
will erode opposition to Israel in other Muslim but
non-Arab or Middle Eastern states. Israeli officials
also hope that recognition will allow them to gain some
means of reliably monitoring Pakistan's nuclear program
and of playing a role in the strategic equation tying
together the Middle East and South Asia.
Thus
Israel has quietly welcomed Pakistan's overtures and it
appears that a process of gradually expanding unofficial
ties between groups in both countries and a foreign
dialogue will take shape until the expected formal
announcement occurs. However, India has now thrown a
spanner into the works. Indian sources have warned the
Israeli government that arms sales to Pakistan would
lead India to pull the plug on defense deals with Israel
totaling several billion dollars, including the purchase
of the Phalcon. While India does not object to the
establishment of bilateral relations between Pakistan
and Israel, it evidently fears that Pakistan will make
such relations conditional on the ability to buy
advanced Israeli weapons systems similar to those that
it buys. For New Delhi this is intolerable and it has
made its objections as clear as possible.
Thus
Israel is now confronted with a dilemma if indeed
Pakistani relations - a major prize for it - are
conditional on arms sales, and hence the jeopardizing of
its ties to India. Of course, this Israeli dilemma
expresses yet again the strategic ties between South
Asia and the Middle East, not the least of which has
been Pakistani help for Iran's nuclear program that
Israel regards as its greatest threat.
Ironically, Iran is now almost India's ally, a
testimony to New Delhi's adroitness in establishing
strong ties with mutually incompatible players at little
or no cost to its interests. The question thus becomes,
can Israel imitate New Delhi or not? The answer will
tell us much about the developing strategic profile of
the Indo-Israeli relationship, but it will also tell us
just as much about prospects for real amelioration of
Indo-Pakistani relations and for the development of
further strategic linkages between the Middle East and
South Asia. However these issues play out, Sharon's
visit to India is a visit to watch and one with profound
repercussions beyond the important issues involved in
these arms sales and the overall bilateral relationship.
Indeed, those repercussions will be felt across much of
Asia.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd.
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