Mayuri Mukherjee
The meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly was undoubtedly a landmark one. It was the first official engagement between the top leaders of the two countries in more than a decade, and marked a unique coming-out-of-the-closet moment for the India-Israel bilateral. While the two countries have quietly worked with each other since independence, formal diplomatic relations were established only 1992; and even in the two decades since then, the relationship has been underplayed. This has been despite Israel’s steadfast support to India, and increased cooperation between the two countries in fields as diverse as agriculture and outer space. In this context, some have noted that the little attention given to Sunday’s meeting does not do justice to its high significance. While this is a valid point, the fact that there wasn’t much of a hullabaloo about the meeting tells another story of how far the bilateral has progressed in these past two decades.
The last time an Indian Prime Minister met with the Israeli Prime Minister was in 2003, when Atal Bihari Vajpayee hosted Ariel Sharon. The tour, though successful, was also marked by staunch opposition from large sections of the Indian Left, which condemned the Government for hobnobbing with the man who had been dubbed as “the killer of Muslims” and portrayed the meeting as a grave insult to India’s Muslim population in particular. Much water has flowed under the bridge since then, but Palestinian issues remain somewhat of a tender point in India – even if only in some university campuses and newspaper Op-ed pages. That there was not even a pipsqueak of protest even from these quarters shows that there is broad political consensus on the India-Israel bilateral. The Modi Government must now seize this moment to ‘normalise’ (for want of a better word) the bilateral, so that Israel gets the attention, respect and support that India accords to its friends – irrespective of the political party in power.
Up until now, the India-Israel bilateral has remained as some sort of a ‘BJP project’ as it is leaders of the BJP who have most often advocated better relations with Israel. At the top of the list is the indomitable Subramanian Swamy, who was the first senior Indian politician to visit Israel. Prime Minister Vajpayee also deserves full credit for being the only Indian head of Government to have hosted an Israeli Prime Minister. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj is a self-declared fan of Israel and has also served as chief of the India-Israel Parliamentary Friendship Committee. When the Gaza crisis erupted this summer, she put up a strong defence for India’s pro-Israel stance in the Lok Sabha.
As for Prime Minister Modi, he has a long-standing relationship with the Israelis. Like all the aforementioned leaders, he too has travelled to Israel and is well aware of how much the Jewish nation can offer India. During his tenure as the Chief Minister of Gujarat, he successfully brought Israeli technology, investment, innovation to his State – and it is widely believed that few diplomats had the kind of access to him as the Israeli Ambassador to New Delhi. Against this backdrop, it is in the fitness of things that after one Prime Minister from the BJP welcomed his Israeli counterpart home, another has proudly acknowledged the India-Israel partnership on the global stage.
This, however, is not to suggest that the Congress did nothing for the India-Israel bilateral. Even if one does not count in Prime Minister P. V Narasimha Rao who established diplomatic ties with Israel, given his strained relationship with the Congress high command, there can be no two ways about the fact that the India-Israel bilateral grew rapidly and robustly under the UPA regime of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Israel quickly became one of India’s biggest defence suppliers, second only to Russia, and bilateral trade has boomed from a $20 million in 1992 to six billion dollars now. There was even a high-level visit during the UPA years by former External Affairs Minister S. M Krishna.
Also, the pro-Arab ideological tendencies (which resulted in anti-Israel gestures) that the Congress had inherited from its previous generation of leaders seeking to win over Muslim voters and minimise the influence of the Muslim League during Independence, had lost currency. For example, while some may have been reading much into the fact that Prime Minister Modi did not bring up the Gaza issue during his meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu, the fact is that this has been the template for years now. Palestinian/Arab issues are almost never brought up by Indian leaders in their meetings with Israeli leaders and diplomats, who, however, often get an earful from the Europeans and Americans.
In effect, the Congress’s ‘anti-Israel’ policy of the past had, in recent years, been reduced to supporting largely meaningless resolutions against the Jewish nation at the UN. Its so-called support for the Palestinian cause was also limited to a small budgetary allowance and a big handshake with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the UNGA. Notably, Modi did not meet Abbas in New York this time – this was reportedly because of scheduling issues, but either way, it comes as no surprise, given the Prime Minister’s strong dislike for meaningless photo-ops.