Asia Times: ... and they could be misplaced


	January 12, 2002	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

India, Israel: Friends in need
By Sultan Shahin

NEW DELHI - Israel's Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres' visit to India - the third in a space of a year - underlines the warmth and understanding characterizing India's new strategic partnership with Israel.

Obviously, the two countries have come a long way since they established full diplomatic ties - Peres' current visit was to mark the 10th anniversary of doing so - and the times when India sided with the Arabs on all issues, particularly the cause of Palestinians.

Significant areas of cooperation between the two countries are counterinsurgency and border management, night warfare and air surveillance, important to preventing Kashmiri militants from Pakistan from crossing over onto Indian soil. Also, the two countries have been sharing intelligence.

Obviously, India finds it useful to learn from Israel's experience in all of these fields. The background to all this has been provided by a growing understanding of the challenges facing both countries and the need for a coordinated response, particularly in view of Pakistan's nuclear and missile capacity, which both countries consider as a long-term threat and would like to devise ways to neutralize.

What helped India and Israel come together so conspicuously was the strategic dialogue held in September, which discussed matters such as the threats to both counties from terrorism developments in South Asia and the Middle East, and the future direction of their cooperation.

While New Delhi and Tel Aviv have taken important steps to further economic and cultural cooperation, defense and security have understandably emerged as areas of primary importance. This became clear last year in November when a seven-member military delegation visited India under the leadership of Amos Yaron, Director-General of Israel's Defense Ministry, and met top officials to discuss matters relating to security and closer military-to-military cooperation.

Military cooperation is of course going hand-in-hand with increased arms purchases from Israel. In the past 10 years, Israel has emerged as India's second largest defense supplier - just behind Russia. Defense transactions that have been signed or that are in the pipeline exceed US$3 billion.

The contrast between then and now is most obvious in the consensus that the new strategic tie-up reveals. Not one political party in India or any section of the media is opposed to the new equation that has developed between the two countries. Even the Congress party under Sonia Gandhi, a scion of the Nehru-Indra Gandhi family, staunch supporters of the Arabs, has not uttered a word of disagreement on the issue. The same is true of all newspapers, except the Urdu newspapers that are run by Muslims.

Most political commentators in India consider the transformation in Indo-Israeli relations as easily understandable. Among the mainstream media, only The Hindu, South India's largest-circulated newspapers, which has a reputation for being liberal, has voiced a certain amount of disquiet and advised the government to be a little careful in developing this new equation, particularly a strategic partnership.

In an editorial on Friday, it says, "In laying out the red carpet for Mr Peres at this time, the Indian officialdom has taken the general line that there is much that New Delhi, which remains a victim of Pakistan-encouraged cross-border terrorism, can learn from Israel's experiences of dealing with the politics of terror in its own neighborhood. Not surprisingly, Mr Peres is reported to have offered to help India in 'every possible way' as it seeks to defend itself against external terrorism."

Then, having talked about the "negative impact" of this development on India's estranged relationship with Pakistan, the newspaper says, "However, the real crux of the new Indo-Israeli bonhomie is the question of the Jewish state's strategic access to India as an emerging global power."

The paper asserts that the administration of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee "must not succumb to the temptation of seeing Israel as the strategic gateway to a new frontier in India's foreign policy". Within the larger Islamic bloc of nations, it points out, Iran is already reported to have voiced concern over Israel's new "activities" in India. "While the Jerusalem establishment may be inclined to dismiss such concerns in the context of its own diplomacy of spreading its strategic wings far and wide, secular India can ill-afford to bring its ties with the somewhat monolithic Muslim bloc under any strain of a new kind," the newspaper commented.

It must be noted, however, that though India continues to be secular as per its constitution, its secularism is under great strain and is indeed being questioned by the ruling Hindu fundamentalist establishment itself. The rulers of the day have no hesitation in writing articles in mainstream and largely circulated newspapers such as the Hindustan Times asserting that India is a Hindu nation, and their views go completely unchallenged either by the ruling establishment or the so-called secular opposition.

Obviously, it is this lurch towards right-wing Hindu extremism in Indian politics and its acceptance by former liberal and secular politicians of India that is also paving the way for a closer strategic relationship with Israel at the cost of India's traditional relationship with Arab and Muslim countries.

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