India Needs to Tread with Caution while Dealing with Israel

Nowadays it is a-la-mode for the major national dailies of India to regularly carry hard news or opinion articles describing the positive face of India-Israel relationship. The Bharatiya Janata Party from the time of its inception has taken a pro-Israel stance, and today with absolute majority in the Parliament is not shying away from embracing Israel as a reliable strategic-partner state of India in the Middle East.

This article attempts to review certain pro and anti-Israel pre-conceptions which exist with regard to the relations between India and Israel and further propose a rational way for the new Indian government to move about while building its relationship with the Jewish state.

Why Israel?

Although India formally established relations with the state of Israel on September 18, 1950,[i] the relationship between the two countries practically stood frozen throughout the Cold War period.[ii] It was under the Congress-led government of P. V. Narasimha Rao that full diplomatic relations with Israel were established on January 29, 1992.[iii] India was propelled to pursue this calculated step after the dissolution of erstwhile USSR for it wanted to forge a strategic entente with the United States with Israel playing chaperone. Over the years, India and Israel have developed close bi-lateral relations, and the basis of this relationship has been arms trade.[iv] Israel has ultra-sophisticated arms and ammunitions to offer and India has continually felt the imperative need for the same- which clearly make them needy trade partners.

It is seen every time a BJP-led government comes to power in India an add-on element of ‘compassion’ gets infused to the bi-lateral relationship. This, in fact, greatly expands the horizon of socio-political and economic engagements between the two countries.  

Existing parallel between India and Israel

Israeli scholars in India or Indian scholars in Israel usually desist from publicly asserting the fact that there is hardly any similarity between the established ‘base/ superstructure’ models of the two countries, if anything at all.  India is a large country with immensely rich natural recourses, save hydrocarbon deposits to an extent, and inclusive political democracy. Whereas, Israel is a miniscule state in terms of both territory and populace and hardly posses any valuable natural recourses, save the newfound hydrocarbon reserves in the Leviathan basin, and cherishes for a Jewish nation-state. India has a strong service sector and a growing manufacturing sector, whereas Israel thrives on the exports of its colossal military-industrial complex and niche high-tech innovations. Moreover, the conflicts that the two countries are engrossed are very different from one another in terms of fighting strategies deployed by belligerent parties, perception of the international community regarding a particular conflict and towards the involved belligerent parties, etc. It will be incorrect to draw any parallel between the conflict in Kashmir or North-East India with the conflict in Palestine. 

The list of disparities between the India and Israel is definitely an extensive one. However a conclusion that hereby clearly gets derived is that the existing disparities between the two states are mutually complimenting in nature. This essentially means the fortes of one state hold potential to assist the other state to address an issue of concern or an area of deficiency.

Dr. Mohan Guruswamy, Chairman of Delhi based think-tank Centre for Policy Alternatives, agrees to the aforesaid proposition. While corresponding with the author of this article, he says: “The Israelis assess India as their primary arms selling market. We are an arms consuming market whose values on corruption are well matched by those of the Jewish nation. I think India is managing its relationship with Israel quite well.”

Proposed direction for engaging with Israel

A leading group of scholars and experts in India, like Dr. Aruna Pendse (Associate Professor at Department of Civics and Politics in Mumbai University), Dr. Mathew Joseph (Associate Professor at Academy of International Studies in Jamia Millia Islamia University and many others in working with different leading academic institutions and strategic think-tanks, are vociferously critical of India’s growing engagement with the Jewish state. They strongly feel India under the new BJP government is shunting from its traditional foreign policy standpoint of supporting Palestinian statehood cause for BJP upholds a rightist ideology that corresponds with the dominant ideology of the Jewish state.

Howsoever, while deciding on the direction of India’s future engagement with Israel it is necessary for the highest political echelon of India to understand what Israel realistically thinks about India, rather than getting influenced by any emotive voices from within or outside.

The highest politico-military establishment of Israel believes India is a considerably reliable and secure market for conducting its primary business of selling sophisticated arms – which it needs to maintain the in-flow of cash for its military-industrial complex that forms the backbone of the country’s economy.[v] They further believe it is essential to have certain joint production activities, which does not involve transfer of high-end sophisticated technologies, in order to physically bind the bi-lateral relationship and bring about co-dependency between the two states. Interestingly, Israel equally keeps open its cards of economically engaging with China for it believes China is the next super-power in the waiting and has a large domestic market with enough space to absorb Israeli technological advances. Since Israel does not carry out arms trade with China under pressure from the U.S., it is willing to get involved with China in all possible other aspects of trade. Howsoever, it is equally willing to partner with India on non-defence sectors, though not at the cost of prioritising India over China. 

India needs to decide if the state-level defence engagements, including arms trade, and the relatively minimum non-defence businesses with Israel in particular niche sectors, like drip irrigation, diamond trade, etc., carries real-value to outweigh the benefits it stands to accrue from sustaining and strengthening the diversified engagements with its traditional partner states in the Middle East, like Turkey, Qatar, etc. It is definitely for the national interest of India to engage with Israel in a way that does not overtly reflect bias towards other countries in the region- which if happens will have corresponding consequences.

Mohan Guruswamy adhering to his standpoint of blossoming India-Israel complimentary relationship says, “At this moment India is not relegating its oil supply interests to favour Israel. Besides the oil is not for the producer to allocate. It is for the consumer to decide where to buy.”

The author is the founder and President of India based NGO, Green-Cosmos. He was a Visiting Research Fellow with the Institute for National Security Studies and an Israel-Asia Leaders Fellow at the Israel-Asia Center for the academic year 2013-2014. Views expressed are personal.