Gaza:
India’s Two Positions, One In Parliament Another At UN
Saeed Naqvi
Sushma Swaraj’s statement on Palestine
in the Rajya Sabha on Monday so pleased Jerusalem that Israeli Foreign Minister
Avigdor Lieberman thanked her that evening over the telephone. But the goodwill
thus generated was fading by Wednesday when New Delhi, having changed its mind,
voted with the resolution at the UN “condemning Israel for disproportionate use
of force in Gaza”.
Twenty nine of UN Human Rights Councils’
47 members voted in favour of creating a commission of inquiry to look at
possible war crimes committed by Israel. Only the United States voted against
the resolution, while 17 states abstained, including 10 European states.
“Along with the BRICS, India reaffirmed
its commitment to a two state solution with a contiguous and economically
viable Palestine State”, with “East Jerusalem as its capital”.
The altered stand has caused the Foreign
Ministry in Jerusalem and its missions at the UN to work overtime trying to
persuade New Delhi not to veer away from the special relationship it now has
with the Jewish state. The Israeli embassy in New Delhi must feel a little
handicapped because it has in place only an Ambassador designate. Efforts are
on to fast-forward his presentation of credentials. The US embassy too is in
the hands of a stop-gap ambassador.
There is a view that the discrepancy
between the statement in Parliament and endorsement of the UNHRC resolution could
have been avoided had the External Affairs Minister accompanied Prime Minister
Narendra Modi to the BRICS summit in Fortaleza, Brazil. The extent to which
BRICS conditions Modi’s understanding of foreign affairs will become clearer
during his meeting with President Obama in September. The Israelis have been
quick to point that of all the BRICS countries they consider India their close
ally. Hence their disappointment with the UNHRC vote.
In 1990, India had lost its central
pillar in foreign affairs with the collapse of the Soviet Union. A nervous New
Delhi did not merely shift, it lurched towards the US and Israel.
The process of opening embassies in Tel
Aviv and New Delhi was speeded up by P.V. Narasimha Rao in 1991.
Even after the exchange of ambassadors,
there was very little movement in bilateral ties, inviting then Foreign
Minister Shimon Peres’ satirical remark during his visit to India in 1992:
“Indo-Israeli relations are like French
perfume: they are to be smelt not drunk.”
Substance in the relationship came after
the Kargil War in 1999 when Israel supplied India with ammunition for its
artillery. There has been no looking back. In fact the US-Israel duet became
the most powerful influence on the conduct of Indian Foreign Policy.
The affair with the US reached its peak
with the Civil Nuclear Deal of 2005. Then, by voting for a Western sponsored
resolution at the IAEA in Vienna, meant to reprimand Iran, India signaled a
final good bye to its long standing policy of non alignment.
That step pleased Washington and
Jerusalem quite as much as Sushma Swaraj’s statement in the Rajya Sabha.
Israeli Newspapers like Jerusalem Post also applauded her stand that “the
present conflict in Gaza could have been ended and peace restored by now if Hamas
had accepted the ceasefire proposal from Egypt”.
Unfortunately, Egyptian President Abdel
Fattah el-Sisi shares Saudi Arabia’s visceral hatred for the Muslim Brotherhood
which was once Egypt’s lifeline to Hamas in Gaza. Egypt discussed the proposed ceasefire
with Israel but not with Hamas. Hence Hamas’ rejection of the proposal.
There are other reasons for Hamas’
defiance.
When war breaks out, the first casualty
is the truth. Since the US (and Israel) has been involved in a near continuous
chain of wars in the Arab world since the collapse of the Soviet Union, western
media has been purveying propaganda. The result of this diminishing credibility
is that Israel may well be losing the propaganda war in this round.
In a recent Al Jazeera TV discussion,
social media experts in Jerusalem, London and Johannesburg, established that
Israeli government propaganda on the social media received only 2,00,000 tweets
as opposed to 4.5 million received by Hamas.
Another study, cited by the British
expert on the panel, Ben White, shows that support for Israel in the US has
dwindled to 57 percent.
Surely, New Delhi too must be alert to
these trends. This, in addition to the fact that millions of Indians work in
Arab lands must be a sobering thought. The Arabs whom Indians live with (if not
the rulers) are sympathetic to the Palestinian victims of an asymmetrical war.
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