Indo- Israel Relations & West Asia

Indias relation with West AsiaMost of Indias conquerors are from West Asia
Afghan invaders were influenzed by Persian culture and ofcourse were Muslims.
West Asia is one part of the world where colonial powers and empires could not
fully dominate.
Until oil was discovered, most of its purpose was its strategic position between
India and Europe.
The constat pursuit of trade routes between these two regions has ensured
steady flow of culture, people and goods in all directions.

India recognised Israel as a State in 1950, kept it as such.

Prior to 1990 India was pro palestiania and not much friendly to Israel
Causes:
Russian favouritism in 1970s because of pragmatism nd ideological closeness
Indian stand against military invasion by Brit, France and Israel during Suez crisis
Israel invasion into Lebanon.
1990 tured a great landmark in IR. Cold war ended => india opened up
diplomatic elations
1992- Indo-Israel diplomacy opened up
Now 3 areas of focus
1. Security
2. Energy
3. Culture

Security
Increased during Vajpayee govt
Against terrorism
Indias need to grow as a military power, especially after Mumbai attacks and
Israel
on look for a stable export market of its tech and defence
machineries has led to close India ties.

Hence, it stands as the most vital of the relationship.

Israels Arrow II misile defense system is better equipped to reduce Pakista
nuclear threat to India. Hence Israel assume significance in that context as
well.
Israel also provided India with early warning, command and coordinating
systems.
However, that said, India is not always supportive of Israels strategy to deal
with its own matters, such as Gaza issue.
India was sympathetic to Gaza
Thus, the bilateral relationship, while serving both countries well, could encounter road
bumps ahead which would require careful management.

Indias reasoning for Palestinian cause

Same time independence and split of nation over Arab and Jews
thereby creating a Plaestine as a Jew state and soon reocgnied by India
However, Israels military power and tech has outshined Indian emotional concern
over Palestine.
Election of Hamas as plicial authority in Palestine put Idnia in trouble as the soft
corner to Palestine now did not stand parallel to the militant activity of Hamas.
Thus better stand is to stay away from the Israel-Palestine issues

Most of the reason why India did not support Isreal during Congress era
was to appease Indian muslims who were emotionally in favour of Palestinan
muslims.
BJP was in support of Israel.
1992- new wave of light, esp because of dilution of cold wa, NAM and
expansionary policy.
India- estb gud links with Mossad thru RAW, especially to counter trategic moves
of Pak and China.
Indian naval presence and domicannce in South Asia and Idnian Ocean also
helped Israel to a great effect in its trade.

Cuurent
FTA to be materialised between Idnia and Israel

From Israel:
The sky is the limit, and India will get whatever defence platform or technology she wants.
He added: If India wants the sophisticated technology behind the Iron Dome system to
tweak it as per its own security needs, even that is possible. We are in this relationship for the
long haul and view it as a marriage. That is why we are clear that we will not sell to
Pakistan.

India is the largest buyer of Israeli defence hardware. The two nations also have
a joint working group on counter-terrorism.
The previous government was somewhat squeamish about being seen getting
close to Israel due to domestic vote bank politics, but it is in Indias national
interest to deepen relations with Tel Aviv while maintaining close ties with
Palestine and the Arab world.

India and Israel are working towards their first agreement to cooperate in the renewable
energy sector, expanding their strategic relationship to energy security.
sraels renewable energy push has been driven by its lack of conventional hydrocarbon
sources in a neighbourhood which has been endowed with them. Israel plans to reduce the
share of oil in its transport sector by 30% by 2020 and by 60% by 2025. The country recently
discovered some gas.
Israel alargely depeandant on renewable resources for reasons of Muslim
neighbourhood.India strikes a tie with them on renewable resources.
Indias National Action Plan on Climate Change recommends that the country generate 10%
of its power from solar, wind, hydropower and other renewable sources by 2015, and 15% by
2020.

Israel seeking Idnan hep in exploring gas .

Thinks of distributing gas to Palestine, Jordan and Egypt together with some EU
so that they do not largely depend on other fluctuating sources.

While historically Israel has been an importer of natural gasmost recently through the
Arish-Ashkelon pipeline from Egypt and a very small portion through a newly installed
floating and regasification terminal the discoveries of the Tamar and Leviathan fields
(among several others) should allow the country to become a significant exporter of natural
gas in the next decade. There are competing proposals to develop pipelines and LNG
(liquefied natural gas) infrastructure to support natural gas exports, but deliberations about
how Israel will get its natural gas to market are ongoing.
India is now the largest buyer of Israeli military equipment, while Israel is India's
largest customer after Russia. In the first nine months of 2014, bilateral trade
reached $3.4 billion, on target for a record this year.
India is steadily catching up with China as it buys more Israeli defense and cybersecurity technology, an area where China is limited since the United States
frowns on Israel dealing too freely with Beijing in defense matters.
The roots of the Israel relationship go back to 2006, when Modi was chief
minister of Gujarat and visited the region to explore new ideas in irrigation, an
area of Israeli expertise.
As a result, India started buying drip-feed technology, said Amnon Ofen, a friend
of Modi's and chairman of NaanDanJain Irrigation, formed after India's Jain
Irrigation acquired a firm created by two Israeli collective farms.
The question is where the relationship goes from here. Strategically, Israel is glad
to have a rising Asian power as an ally. But for both the focus is really on
business.
ndia last month decided to buy Israeli anti-tank guided missiles and launchers,
shunning a rival U.S. offer, and is reviving joint development of a long-range
missile. The moves came soon after Modi held talks with Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, the first meeting between Indian and Israeli leaders in a decade.
While the U.S., Russia and European nations are likely to remain Indias top
suppliers of ships or aircraft, Israels missile systems, surveillance, and ordnance
systems are designed for the kind of threats posed by hostile neighbors and
terrorists, according to Jon Grevatt, Asia-Pacific defense industry analyst for IHS
Janes.

Until the end of the Cold War, India had maintained consistent support for Palestinians.
Mahatma Gandhi had poured scorn on the idea of a Jewish state in the Middle East. Surely it
would be a crime against humanity, he wrote in 1938, to reduce the proud Arabs so that
Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home. Indias first

prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, voted against Israel joining the United Nations in 1949.
And the Nehruvian principle of solidarity with anti-colonial causes guided Indian foreign
policy for much of the 20th century. In 1974, India became the first non-Arab state to
recognize the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as the official representative of
Palestinians. It treated Israel with much the same diplomatic disdain it reserved for apartheid
South Africa.
Critics of Indias traditional Israel policy dismiss it as a cynical bid to court Indias large
Muslim vote, but many officials saw an echo of their own worldview in the struggle of a
secular and multi-religious PLO against an Israeli state defined by religion. Some even saw
that as an echo of Indias own confrontations with Pakistan. Both Israel and Pakistan were
born after World War II with religious identity as their central organizing principle, as a result
of partition policies adopted by the departing British colonial authorities.
Its a parallel not lost on Pakistani leaders. Former military dictator Gen. Zia ul-Haq claimed
in 1981 that Pakistan is like Israel, an ideological state. Take out the Judaism from Israel and
it will fall like a house of cards. Take Islam out of Pakistan and make it a secular state; it
would collapse. In 2012, another former military dictator, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, urged the
establishment of better ties with Israel.
Indias foreign policy shift on Israel began with the international impact of the collapse of the
Soviet Union. Non-alignment and anti-colonial solidarity seemed moth-eaten in a world of
unrivaled American power and triumphant capitalism. India pivoted, aligning itself more
closely with the United States. It also began to strengthen ties with Israel, with both countries
exchanging ambassadors in 1992.
Indias engagement with Israel has grown substantially in the last two decades on military,
scientific, commercial and agricultural matters. The affinity has been less ideological than
pragmatic, each side understanding the others needs. Israel remains uncomfortable about
Indias close ties with Iran, just as India looks warily at Israels relationship with China.
Neither side allows their bilateral relationship to be imperiled by Indias rhetorical
condemnation of Israeli actions dismissed by one Israeli journalist as Indias periodic lip
service to the Palestinian plight.
Material benefits are not the only reason for Indias foreign policy establishment building
friendly relations with Israel. Theres also the feeling that New Delhi has been poorly
compensated for supporting Palestine. It may be home to the worlds second largest Muslim
population, but India has been consistently blocked from involvement in the Organization of
the Islamic Conference. It is also disappointed by what it sees as the Arab worlds simplistic
position on the thorny issue of Kashmir. India has received no worthwhile backing from the
Arab countries in the resolution of problems it faces in its neighborhood, especially
Kashmir, wrote Harsh V. Pant, a scholar of international relations at Kings College London.
There have been no serious attempts by the Arab world to put pressure on Pakistan to reign
in the cross-border insurgency in Kashmir.

Indias Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj insisted in July that there is absolutely no change in
Indias policy towards Palestine, which is that we fully support the Palestinian cause while
maintaining good relations with Israel. That might sound like fence-sitting, but its a policy
shared by all Indian governments of the past 20 years.
Though Indias realpolitik shift is not the work of a particular party or faction, Indias
resurgent right-wing is far more ideologically sympathetic to Israel. Prime Minister Modi,
then-chief minister of Gujarat with a reputation as an anti-Muslim firebrand, visited Israel in
2006. The Indian conversation about Israel and Palestine has become tinged by Indias own
politics of religion and identity. Indias defenders of Israel see both nations engaged in a
common conflict against Islamist extremism, placing Hamas in a continuum that runs all the
way to South Asia.
According to the conservative political writer Swapan Dasgupta, Israel has far more friends
in India than TV anchors and left-leaning policy correspondents realize. The same Internet
army of right-wing Indians that supported Modis election has mobilized in support of Israel.
The Twitter hashtag #IndiaWithIsrael trended across the country, galvanizing real-life
rallies in support of Israels campaign in Gaza. Chetan Bhagat, an author who sells millions
of books and is widely seen as the voice of the youthful middle-class, spoke out in favor of
Israel. What is happening to Gaza isn't fair, he tweeted, but sadly that is the only way
sometimes terrorist organizations and their supporters learn to behave.
Israeli embassy spokesman Ohad Horsandi emphasized the shared experience of terrorism.
Israel, India and other like minded countries, he told Indian media, are facing terror
threats from organizations with similar radical ideology such as Al-Qaeda, ISIS, LeT
[Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistan-based militant outfit accused of committing the 2008 Mumbai
attacks and other atrocities in India] and Hamas. These organizations are committed to kill,
kidnap and terrorize civilians and should be treated as terrorist organizations.
Public opinion in India remains divided, however, and Indians of all stripes have expressed
horror at the Israeli siege of Gaza. But the extent of public support in India for Israels current
offensive would have been unimaginable a decade ago.
Where once the anti-colonial rhetoric of Gandhi and Nehru might have guided Indian
affinities, in todays enthusiasm for the war on terror we see traces of another 20th century
Indian ideologue.
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar was at odds with the secular pluralism of Indias mainstream
independence struggle. His book, Hindutva, provided the theoretical underpinning of the
Hindu nationalist tradition that eventually birthed the BJP.
Inspired by Zionism, Savarkar believed that Hindus and Jews shared a history of oppression
at the hands of Muslims, and that both deserved redress. It must be emphasized that
speaking historically, the whole of Palestine has been, from at least 2,000 years before the

birth of the Muslim prophet, the national home of the Jewish people, Savarkar said.
In Hindutva (published in 1923), he underlined his support for the Zionist cause. "If the
Zionists dreams were realized, if Palestine became a Jewish state, it would gladden us almost
as much as our Jewish friends."
Under Modis leadership, India looks set to build an even closer friendship with Israel, no
matter what degree of devastation is unleashed in Gaza this summer.