Asia Times: India moves closer to Israel


	July 11, 2000	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

India moves closer to Israel
By Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI - Accusing predecessors of playing politics with the national interest, India's ruling coalition, led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is accelerating an upgrading of ties with Israel.

Returning this week from the first trip by an Indian foreign minister to Israel, senior BJP leader Jaswant Singh attributed decades of New Delhi's coolness to Tel Aviv to ''domestic policies because of a Muslim vote bank''.

Singh's Israel visit followed one in June by Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani, a hardliner closely associated with the BJP's past campaign against the ''appeasement'' of India's 200 million Muslims. Advani became the first senior member of an Indian government to visit Israel since the normalization of ties in 1992.

The Indian foreign minister's visit has led to the formalization of a security dialogue between the National Security Advisors of the two countries and the establishment of a joint ministerial council that will meet twice a year.

However, observers of India-Israel ties noted that Singh's allegation was more an attempt to score a political point over rivals, especially the main opposition Congress party that ruled India for 45 of the 53 years since independence from British rule. Indeed, foreign policy analysts pointed out, it was the Congress government of former Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao that decided to normalize relations in 1992 in recognition of changed international political realities.

Among other Indian leaders visiting Israel in June and July were Jyoti Basu, chief minister of West Bengal state which is ruled by the BJP's arch-foe, the Marxist Communist Party, and senior Congress leader Najma Heptullah, the deputy chairperson of the upper house of parliament.

Although New Delhi has been an ardent backer of the Palestinian cause, its coolness toward Israel had as much to do with its dependence on Arab oil in a period when the Arab world was still not reconciled to the existence of the Jewish state, analysts said. As a major importer of hydrocarbons from the Middle East and with millions of Indians working in the oil-rich nations of the region, India had practical considerations in mind.

But in the 1990s it became apparent to New Delhi that its unwavering support for the Arab cause at bilateral and multi-lateral fora was beginning to have diminishing returns, said international affairs expert Christopher Raj, of the prestigious New Delhi-based Jawaharlal Nehru University.

India could also no longer continue to ignore repeated indictments of its Kashmir policy by the Islamic nations bloc, the Organization of Islamic Conference. In sharp contrast, Tel Aviv endeared itself to New Delhi by consistently backing India's stand that the 1972 Shimla agreement between India and Pakistan could be the only basis for a final settlement of the Kashmir issue.

However, Raj agreed with the view that past governments had let domestic political considerations influence their stand on Israel. Most ordinary Indians - Muslim and Hindu - remain unaware of the changes that have taken place in the Arab world in the past quarter century, he said. ''No political party has taken the trouble to explain to Indian Muslims that the major Arab states, with the exception of Syria and Iraq, have recognized the right of Israel to exist,'' he pointed out.

The 1991 Gulf War should also have dispelled any doubts as to where the loyalties of the oil-rich Arab monarchies lay, in spite of their many grievances against the United States.

Since 1992, several Indian political leaders have travelled to Israel. These included chief ministers of several states, including those ruled by the Congress party. Many of these trips were undertaken to learn from Israel's expertise in farm irrigation.

According to Israel's ambassador in New Delhi, Yehoyada Haim, visits by the chief ministers have resulted in nearly 180 joint-ventures between Indian and Israeli companies. In the past three years, India has also bought Israeli defense equipment worth nearly half a billion US dollars. This includes unmanned surveillance aircraft, anti-tank ammunition and communications systems. The Indian army chief made an official visit to Tel Aviv in March 1998.

The Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests in May 1998 are also seen to have influenced India-Israel relations. Israel cannot be unconcerned about the implications of Pakistan creating the so-called ''Islamic bomb'' and would gladly share intelligence with India, Raj said. He referred to Israel's willingness to sell India the unmanned planes for close surveillance at a time when Western nations had refused to do so.

However, according to leading foreign policy media analyst C Raja Mohan, Israel is not the only potential security partner India has in the Middle East. ''Religious extremism threatens to undermine the existing political order in many Middle Eastern states and India has a huge common ground to exploit,'' he said, writing in The Hindu newspaper. Many Arab countries such as Egypt and Algeria have also been victims of international terrorism, he said.

(Inter Press Service)

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