The Globalist: Ambivalence towards Tel Aviv will cost New Delhi

A recent report released by Britain’s Department for Business, Innovation and Skills suggesting that Israel has exported military equipment including hi-tech gear used in fighter jets over the past five years to Pakistan is attracting significant attention in India.

How could Israel, our close ally, do this — supply weapons technology to our arch-enemy Pakistan? This is the question that is being asked and those who have always been anti-Israel are retorting — we told you so!

Israel’s ministry of defence and foreign ministry have been prompt in their responses. The foreign ministry categorically denied any such sale making it clear that “Israel does not supply defence equipment to Pakistan,” a policy which is not only stated but “implemented completely.”

Israel’s ministry of defence underlined that “the State of Israel would not do anything that could undermine India’s security,” strongly denying selling military equipment to Pakistan.

The Israeli government has already reached out to the British government seeking clarifications and is willing to look into “whom it was that sold weapons to Pakistan ostensibly posing as an Israeli.”

India’s relationship with Israel today is about much more than mere defence supplies but those who have always been sceptical about getting close to Tel Aviv will now get one more stick to beat Israel with. Two aspects of this issue should, however, be recognized in India.

One, just as India has expanded its ties with the Arab Gulf states, Iran and Israel at the same time in West Asia, Israel’s attempt to boost its ties with Pakistan should not be of any great surprise. The same report that has brought out Israel’s purported sale of weapons technology to Pakistan also underlines Israel’s deals with other Islamic nations such as Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Algeria and Morocco.

For all the brouhaha that the Arab Gulf states make about Israel in public, their primary security concern at the moment is Iran’s rising regional profile and its nuclear ambitions. Israel and the Arab world are on the same side in this regional dynamic though not many in the Arab world would acknowledge this.

The other aspect relates to India’s own ambivalence about its partnership with Israel. The Israeli government has been quick to underscore its ‘strategic partnership’ with India since the release of the British report, arguing that “Israel has a long-standing strategic relationship with India, a democracy that also understands what it means to fight terror, and a country we see as a strategic anchor in global affairs.”

Few in New Delhi’s policy establishment would be willing to reciprocate the sentiment. Ever since the coming to power in 2004 of the United Progressive Alliance, there has been a systematic downgrading of Israel in Indian foreign policy. High level visits between the two states came off the agenda. It was only last year that India’s external affairs minister could find time to visit Israel and that too as part of a regional tour that included visits to the Palestinian authority–controlled West Bank, Jordan and the UAE.

Meanwhile, India has not only continued with its strong support for Palestinian political positions but has also added another layer of complexity by making East Jerusalem an important feature of its interventions on the Palestinian-Israeli peace process. New Delhi has carefully avoided this issue since 1992 when normalization of its ties with Israel commenced but since 2009 the issue of East Jerusalem is a standard feature of Indian interventions.

Israel has been a good friend of India, but New Delhi continues to be shy of demonstrating its friendship. At crucial times, when India needed Israeli help, it got it unreservedly. The terrorism that both India and Israel face comes not only from disaffected groups within their territories; it is also aided and abetted by neighbouring States, mostly under non-democratic regimes increasingly capable of transferring weapons of mass destruction to terrorist organisations.

States like Pakistan, Iran and Syria have long used terror as an instrument of their foreign policies. There are, therefore, distinct structural similarities in the kind of threat that India and Israel face from terrorism. It is also important to note that when the extremist mullahs call upon their followers to take up arms in support of an Islamic jihad, their foremost exhortations have always been the ‘liberation’ of Palestine, Kashmir, and the annihilation of the United States.

The ballast for Indo-Israeli ties is provided by the defence cooperation between the two states with Israel adopting a pragmatic attitude with respect to weapon sales to India, contrary to other developed states which have traditionally looked at weapons sales to India from the perspective of the balance of power in South Asia.

Israel was willing to continue and even step up its arms sales to India after other major states curbed technology exports following India’s May 1998 nuclear tests. Israel provided India much-needed imagery about Pakistani positions using its UAVs during the Kargil War with Pakistan in 1999 that was instrumental in turning the war around for India.

Yet there has been no public affirmation of its ties with Israel by New Delhi in recent times. Compare this to the bombast associated with the so-called ‘civilisational partnership’ with Iran in New Delhi despite all the evidence to the contrary.

Against this backdrop, it is easy to understand Israel’s decision to expand its partnership with Pakistan if indeed that has happened. Tel Aviv has forcefully rejected the allegation made in the British report and there is no reason to doubt it. But New Delhi needs to wake up and realise that if it won’t nurture its ties with Tel Aviv, then it will be the loser in the long-term.

The author teaches at King’s College, London.