De-radicalise education to end terrorism: Israel envoy

Hyderabad:Over the years, Israel has become one of key pillars of the Indian geopolitical strategy. India and Israel have multi-faceted collaboration encompassing research, defence, and high-tech sectors. Both the countries also have excellent people to people contacts, which lays foundation for strong strategic partnership.

In a free-wheeling interview with Deccan Chronicle, Israel’s Ambassador to India Reuven Azar spoke about the prospects of Indo-Israeli partnership, prospects of ceasefire with Hamas, his country’s improving relations with other Arab countries and the need to end radicalisation for a peaceful world.

Excerpts:

Q. Israel has been at war for several months. How has it affected your economy?

The impact on the economy has been mainly in the first few weeks after the October 7 attack because of the shock of the war and the fact that we had to recruit hundreds of thousands of reserve soldiers into the army. But it was a very fast recovery because from the moment we neutralised the missile threat coming from Hamas, the Israeli economy went back to business.

So some sectors of the economy such as tourism didn't recover. But the main bulk of the economy, especially the high-tech sector, recovered in an excellent way. Despite the fact we had a war for the last year, the economy grew by 1.5 per cent. It didn't shrink.

So we are in a fairly good situation. Thanks to the policies of the government throughout the years, our economy is growing very fast. Therefore, we are pretty optimistic that if this ceasefire with Hezbollah holds, the numbers will go up very fast.

Now that you have a ceasefire with Hezbollah, how hopeful are you about this ceasefire extending to Hamas?

Well, first of all, we have to see whether the ceasefire with Hezbollah holds. If you remember what happened one day after the attack of Hamas, Hezbollah immediately started attacking Israel. They have built an infrastructure throughout the years on the border with Israel that would allow them to launch a massive attack on northern Israel. We have uprooted all that infrastructure. And under the terms of the ceasefire, Hezbollah is not allowed to move south to the Litani River. If the Lebanese government doesn't enforce it, we will have to enforce it. And that means that we will have to take measures, and that can undermine the ceasefire.

If that agreement is implemented, we would have broken what our enemies called the unity of fronts, by taking Hezbollah, and Iran out of the equation. So now Hamas is more isolated.

We have already destroyed Hamas’ military capability. But still, they have control over the civilian population. So we have to see how we can bring back 101 hostages, and how to create a situation where there is a brighter future for the people of Gaza. And this is what we want to create together with international partners.

It won't be easy because these radicals are very stubborn. They don't care about civilian casualties. They don't care about the price that the population is paying. So although we have killed almost 20,000 Hamas terrorists, they don't want to surrender. They want to continue doing what they're doing. They are hoping that Israel will withdraw from the Gaza Strip and they can rearm, regroup and recreate the threat that they created on October 7. But I'm optimistic that after the ceasefire in Lebanon, we'll be able to find a way in a combination of military pressure and other measures in collaboration with the international community to create stability in Gaza.

It is said radicalisation is the root cause of terrorism. Is there a way the global community can uproot this threat?

Absolutely. I think that the efforts to de-radicalize the population are essential. And there are some countries that have started to work in pretty efficient ways in dealing with de-radicalisation.

First of all, it has to do with the education system. You know, for example, the United Arab Emirates took a decision after 9/11, a generation ago, to remove all radical content from the education system. Since then, you have a new generation of citizens of the UAE that are de-radicalized.

So it starts from the education system. To a certain extent, this is happening also now in Saudi Arabia, in Morocco, in countries that understand the dangers of radicalisation. But we have a lot of challenges here because there are movements like the Muslim Brotherhood in the Sunni world that continue to preach radicalisation. When you have countries that are basically disintegrated, like non-functional countries like Iraq, it's very hard to fight radicalisation.

We also have a challenge in the Palestinian society. After Hamas took over the Gaza Strip, they have been indoctrinating people for 17 years. The Palestinian children from the age of two or three are taught only how to kill Jews, and how to eradicate the state of Israel. So this has to stop.

Now we've seen that India has been pretty successful in fighting radicalism, not only through hard power, but also through soft power. For example, we've seen how elections were conducted in Jammu and Kashmir. So the combined efforts have to be such that they include fighting terrorists, but also convincing people that they should participate in the democratic process. It's very hard to do it in West Asia, because there are many countries in our region that are completely disintegrated.

And the Islamic Republic of Iran has an agenda of revolution. They are spreading radicalism throughout the Muslim world, especially to places which have Shiite minorities, like in Yemen, like the Shiites in Lebanon. And they are not only radicalizing them, but they are supplying them the most sophisticated weapons. So imagine if you had a situation that you had to deal with here in this part of the world that you're living in with terrorist organizations that have more sophisticated weapons than conventional armies have. It's completely crazy.

Q. So what will happen if Iran acquires nuclear weapons? How close is it?

First of all, let's be frank. Nuclear science is not something very advanced. It's pretty antiquated. This technology was acquired by the United States more than 80 years ago. So it's not so difficult to acquire it. The challenge is that you have some countries in the world that combine the capability to produce nuclear weapons with radical intentions. So when these two things combine, this is very dangerous for the world. So if Iran would acquire nuclear weapons, it would terrorise the entire region much more than it is doing now, because it would feel immune.

Therefore, Israel has invested a lot of effort in the last few decades to try to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. And we did it in different ways, not only through political pressure, but also through a combined effort of our intelligence forces and military capabilities that we developed in order to thwart their advancement to nuclear weapons. If we wouldn't have done that, they already would have had nuclear weapons many years ago.

Q. How are Israel's relations with other Arab countries?

On the optimistic side, I can tell you that in the last few years, because of this danger of radicalism, we've seen more and more Arab countries coming to terms with Israel and aligning with us and the United States. So what happened following the Abraham Accords in 2018 is that we increased our defence cooperation with a set of Arab countries like the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, etc. So this means that there are countries that are interested in stability and prosperity, and I'm sure that once this conflict is over, we'll be able to renew our efforts, to also combine the efforts of India to create this connectivity between Asia and Europe through a corridor of stability in the Middle East. Therefore, I'm very optimistic that we can relaunch this initiative called IMEC, to connect the Middle East with, to connect India to Europe via the Middle East.

Q. How do you think this current conflict would affect this corridor?

Well, positively. Because once the radicals are deterred, once the radicals understand that they cannot fulfill their initiative and their aspiration to push for havoc in the region, once they have received a severe blow such as what Israel did to them, I think this will make the area much more secure.

Q. India and Israel have excellent relations. Your capabilities and our capabilities actually complement each other. You have great technology, while we have a manufacturing base. So, will there be further deepening of collaboration between India and Israel?

Israel is increasingly having more interest in the Indian market, for several reasons. First of all, because we have common values and we are very close to each other. In addition, our defence cooperation has risen to a level that is unprecedented. This trust that we have between us has not only created partnerships in the supply of systems, but we are now producing together.

In the context of Make in India, there are more and more Israeli industries opening here, like the one we inaugurated last week in Hyderabad. It's a factory that repairs the modules of the radar systems that have been supplied to the Indian armed forces. These are one of the best radar systems in the world and have thwarted the attack from Iran. These modules are very sophisticated modules and there are only two or three factories in the world that can maintain these modules.

In the civilian sector also, there is huge interest from Israel startups and unicorns in the Indian market, because of several reasons. First of all, they want to manufacture here. They want to commercialise their products here. As much as the Indian economy grows, then the chain of supply will be more reliable for them. I think that the Indian business sector also has an interest in Israel. About 50 per cent of our exports are innovation. But we don't have the entire economic chain that India has. Therefore, we are beginning to see a new trend in which Indian conglomerates are investing to purchase Israeli startups, because they want to own the technology.

So when we opened the skies of Saudi Arabia and Oman, we had Air India flying to Israel. We hope they come back to fly very soon. We also need to have direct flights to Mumbai, Bengaluru, and hopefully also to Hyderabad. In this way, it will be easy to make business.

We also have to sign investment agreements and financial protocols. I am determined to advance that. We are going to bring delegations from our finance ministry here. We have to finalise this so the business people feel safe and feel comfortable to come here and to go from here to there.

There were some reports that you were working on laser technology. How advanced is it compared to Iron Dome?

When we talk about defending the skies, there are different layers of defence. There's no one system that gives a solution for everything. You have the Iron Dome that is dealing mainly with the short range, then you have David Sling that is dealing with the medium and also Arrow 1 and 2. And you have Arrow 3 that is giving an answer for intercontinental ballistic missiles.

So the laser is going to make two things. First, it's going to lower the cost of intercepting short range missiles and drones because the pulses that you have to use to operate the laser system are much cheaper — a few dozen of dollars — instead of Iron Dome, which one missile costs about $30,000. So it's going to reduce the cost of defending the sky.

However, it also has limitations because it has some weather limitations. So it's only the combination, Iron Dome and the laser that is going to give a more comprehensive solution. But we are now experimenting with it. I think it will take some time until we make it fully operational and additional time until it is commercialised fully and exported. But it's a great promise and I'm sure it's going to be perfected in the coming years.

After the introduction of drones, the battlefield has totally changed. What kind of collaboration do India and Israel have in this space?

We already have joint ventures with India. Several Indian companies have partnered with Israeli companies in the drone sector. There are also startups here in India on drones. We also did a major event about two months ago in Delhi, in which we brought leading companies in Israel that deal with anti-drone systems and technologies. Because you have to protect yourself from drones at different levels, not just at the military level. You need it for border security, you need it for defending airports and sensitive installations. So we have presented these technologies to different layers of the Indian market, the government sector, the homeland security sector, and the private sector.