‘Look-East’ Bibi stirs India, China race

President Pranab Mukherjee’s six-day trip to Jordan, Palestine and Israel, from October 10-16, was path-breaking as the first by an Indian Prime Minister or President to Israel. Although India recognised Israel in 1948, it held back establishing diplomatic relations till January 1992. Coincidently, China too did the same in that month. The reason was two-fold. The Oslo Accords and the Madrid Peace Conference had Israel’s Arab neighbours, including the Palestinians, sitting at the table with them. Secondly, with the Cold War over and the Soviet Union fragmented, creating the illusion, as Francis Fukuyama phrased it, that “history had ended”, India and China were hurriedly adjusting to the new world.

As director (WANA), I initiated the note to establish diplomatic relations with Israel, directed by foreign secretary J.N. Dixit’s office, unaware that the urgency emanated from the then Prime Minister, P.V. Narasimha Rao, who was using normalisation with Israel not only to escape from a diplomatic corner but for better relations with the US, aware of the Jewish lobby’s influence. Besides economic liberalisation and reform, Prime Minister Rao was adjusting India’s foreign policy to the new realities of an emerging unipolar world. President Mukherjee’s tour was constructed to optically soften the impact of his visit to Israel in the Arab and Islamic worlds by appending halts in Jordan and Palestine.

The President received three honorary doctorates — one in each country, although the Palestinian one was at Al-Quds University, located in East Jerusalem, balancing his visit to the holy city’s western part where the Israeli government is located. India still maintains, like many other nations, its embassy in Tel Aviv, to reflect concerns about Israel seizing parts of Jerusalem and West Bank, and Gaza in the 1967 war. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expounded on relations with India in his speeches, to which President Mukherjee responded during the banquet and his address to the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament. Mr Netanyahu effusively referred to his Indian “friend” Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to whom, he claimed, he spoke frequently — a fact not commonly known in India. He added that while “we appreciate Europe; we admire Asia”.

This Netanyahu “Look East” doctrine naturally encompasses, inter alia, India and China. Mr Netanyahu explained — what would be music to Prime Minister Modi’s ears and is a mirror image of his Pakistan policy — that the only pre-condition to talks with Palestinians was that terror must stop. In that one line, he abjured any responsibility to reach out to the divided Palestinians, whom he continues to bait by endorsing the expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied areas, despite even US objections. Protests of the intifada kind began during the presidential visit, but have exacerbated since then, making US secretary of state John Kerry rush to Israel.

President Mukherjee was careful not to offend India’s pro-Palestine constituency in the Arab world. Israeli media berated him for not raising the terrorism issue in Palestine. He also stuck to the Indian mantra on Palestine about a “negotiated solution resulting in a sovereign, independent, viable and united Palestine, with East Jerusalem as its capital, living within secure and recognised borders”.

This was mere tokenism as the Modi government began moving India-Israel relations from enlightened pragmatism, devoid of symbolic high-level contact, to a warmer embrace, reflecting the strategic underpinnings more correctly. On July 3, 2015, India was one of five nations, the others being small states, to abstain at the United Nations Human Rights Council at Geneva on the Report of the Independent Commission of Inquiry on the 2014 Gaza Conflict. The only nation opposing was the US. India explained its vote as objection to a reference to the International Criminal Court, whose jurisdiction India rejects.

There is talk of Prime Minister Modi also visiting Israel. From Israel only two high-level visits were made in the past: President Ezer Weizman, 1997, and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, 2003. Prime Minister Netanyahu may come before Prime Minister Modi decides to visit the land that three religions hold dear — Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Israel has strategic utility for India on multiple technological levels. President Mukherjee recalled but one when thanking Israel for the prompt supply of defence material during the 1999 Kargil conflict. Three memorandums signed during the visit cover water, energy and education. In addition, defence, agriculture and scientific research are in play. In the pre nuclear-deal era, when India was saddled with high-technology denial regimes, Israel was a reliable source in some areas. Now the path is clearer and has great potential.

The competition to India is from China. While China had a free run in Israel in the 1980s, post-Cold War US oversight has kept some defence platforms from its reach, i.e., the Phalcon airborne early warning system. However, China has cleverly used its financial muscle to buy into high-tech companies in fields like agro-chemicals, cyber defence, etc. The locus of West Asian politics has, meanwhile, shifted away from the Palestinian issue to the crisis in Syria. While in Jordan hopefully President Mukherjee would have discussed the neo-Cold War beginning in Syria with Russia and Iran aligned with the Assad regime, opposed by a fractious combine of Sunni and US and jihadi elements.

Public statements gave no evidence that the presidential visit was for purposes other than to justify warmer outreach to Israel. Closer India-Israel relations must be a part of the Modi government’s West Asia policy that recognises the emerging realities in the region, and not a sub-set of Prime Minister Rao’s re-calibration 34 years ago. Foreign policy must be driven by enlightened self-interest moderated by syncretic Indian values, not sterile ideologies.

The writer is a former secretary in the external affairs ministry. He tweets at @ambkcsingh