What on
earth, one might legitimately wonder, could India have in common with Israel?
Wildly at variance in size (India’s population tops 1.25 billion; Israel’s
struggles to reach 8 million), they are at least both alumni of Britain’s
one-time imperial college, each with somewhat equivocal feelings towards their
alma mater, and struggling free of their colonial bonds within a few months of
each other in 1947-48. Even so, for a long time the connection between New
Delhi and Jerusalem was far from close. It took forty years for India to
overcome the fear that close relations with the Jewish State might somehow
radicalize its Muslim citizens – who number over 100 million – and hurt its relations
with the Arab world.
It was, perhaps, the disintegration in 1991 of the Soviet Union – long a
bulwark of the Arab Middle East – that encouraged India to overcome those
misgivings. Its main Muslim neighbour on the sub-continent, Pakistan, has never
recognized Israel, but India has conducted an on-off armed struggle with
Pakistan since its foundation, so any scruples about hurting its feelings
probably did not weigh very heavily in India’s consideration. Perhaps both
India and Israel saw themselves as isolated democracies threatened by
neighbours that train, finance and encourage terrorism. Whatever the rationale,
in 1992 India established full diplomatic relations with Israel, and since then
economic, social and security collaboration between the two nations has
burgeoned, and India has become one of Israel’s largest trading partners.
In 2014 Indo-Israeli bilateral trade, excluding defence, reached $4.52
billion, a 3.8 percent increase on the previous year. But it is defence and security
that lie at the heart of the ever-closer ties between India and Israel, with the
effective countering of terrorism as the prime objective. Israel has sold radar
and surveillance systems for military aircraft and has provided India with
training in counter-terrorism. In November 2011, India’s élite Cobra Commando
unit bought more than 1,000 Israeli X-95 assault rifles for counter-insurgency
operations, and placed orders for four advanced Israeli Phalcon planes equipped
with airborne warning and control systems (AWACS). Further orders for advanced
counter-terrorism military hardware followed, backed by a joint
intelligence-sharing agreement between the two nations aimed at fighting
radical Islamic extremism.
The blossoming collaboration was endorsed when, for the first time in
over a decade, the prime ministers of Israel and India met in
September 2014 in New York. Extreme cordiality seems to have marked the encounter
between Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu and
Indian Prime Minister Narenda Modi. They met again in November, on the
sidelines of the climate change conference in Paris, just as Israel Aerospace
Industries successfully tested a jointly developed Indian-Israeli Barak 8 air
and naval defence missile system – “an important milestone in the cooperation
between India and Israel”, according to a top advisor to India’s defense
minister.
All of which both provides the background to, and perhaps explains, the
first-ever official visit by an Indian head of state to Israel a year later. In
October 2015 President Pranab Mukherjee arrived in Jerusalem, to a rumbling
background of media reservations, despite the fact that Mukherjee visited both
Jordan and the Palestinian territories ahead of his visit to Israel, and expressed India’s solid support
for a “sovereign, independent, viable and united State of Palestine, with East
Jerusalem as its capital, living within secure and recognized borders, side by
side at peace with Israel as endorsed in the Quartet Roadmap and relevant UNSC
Resolutions.”
Hosted by Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin, Mukherjee, in his own words,
“reviewed our multidimensional relations and explored ways and means to enhance
them for the mutual benefit of our two countries.”
The fact that mutual benefit is indeed being derived from this
ever-closer Indo-Israeli relationship is undisputed. India is one of the
world’s two most rapidly developing economies (China is the other), and
represents a huge potential market for Israel’s defence, aerospace, and
high-tech industries – a market already being exploited, but one with
unimaginably vast possibilities still to be explored. “The sky’s the limit”, said Netanyahu recently,
referring to the potential for strengthening bilateral Indo-Israel co-operation
in a wide variety of fields.
For India, Israel offers access to the most advanced technologies available
in the world, across a range of areas – defence, security, computer science,
cyber forensics, agricultural techniques, micro-irrigation, urban water
systems. In 2013, Israel announced a scheme to help India diversify and raise
the yield of its fruit and vegetable crops. By March 2014, 10 Centres of
Excellence were operating throughout India, offering free training sessions for
farmers in efficient agricultural techniques using Israeli technology and
know-how, including vertical farming, drip irrigation and soil solarisation. A
year later, no less than 29 such Centres were in operation.
As for the field of defence, in 2015 Israel Aerospace Industries and the
Indian state-owned Defense Research and Development Organization began
collaborating on a jointly developed surface-to-air missile system for the
Indian Army. India uses Israel-made unmanned drones for surveillance and
military purposes, and during 2015 ordered 16 drones and well as buying 321
launchers and 8,356 missiles from the Israeli military.
That India’s stance vis-a-vis Israel has shifted became evident when
India took to abstaining, rather than vote against Israel in a succession of UN
votes. The most notable occasion was in July 2015, when India abstained on the
vote to adopt the UN Human Rights Council’s report on Operation Protective
Edge, Israel’s action against Hamas’s rocket attacks the previous year. It was
the first time in decades that India had abstained from a decision against
Israel in an international forum. India has long been a key player in the
Non-Aligned Movement – a body of states that would automatically vote for the
Palestinians and against Israel.
It may also explain why India’s Foreign Minister, Sushma Swaraj, will be visiting Israel from
January 16-19. Swaraj, who served from 2006 to 2009 as chair of the
Indo-Israeli Parliamentary Friendship Group, last came to the country in 2008.
Her forthcoming tour may herald an official visit later in 2016 by Indian prime
minister Modi – the first by an Indian prime minister, announced back in June
2015, but which has so far failed to materialize. Given the huge and developing
level of cooperation between the two nations, Modi’s trip to Israel cannot be
long delayed.
Neville Teller
Neville Teller is the author
of "The Search for Détente; Israel and Palestine 2012-2014" (2014)
and writes the blog "A Mid-East Journal". He is also
a long-time dramatist, writer and abridger for BBC radio and for the UK
audiobook industry. Born in London and educated at Owen's School and St Edmund
Hall, Oxford, he is a past chairman of the Society of Authors' Broadcasting
Committee, and of the Contributors' Committee of the Audiobook Publishing
Association. He was made an MBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours, 2006 "for
services to broadcasting and to drama."
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