#dnaEdit: BJP’s Israel policy

A part from his show-stopper engagement with the Indian expatriates at the Madison Square Garden on September 29 in New York, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had two interesting and important meetings with the American Jewish Committee (AJC), and then with his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu. Modi’s meeting with Netanyahu was the first in 11 years after the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-Ariel Sharon meeting in New Delhi in 2003.  It was noted that despite their frenetic engagements on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) meeting, Modi and Netanyahu managed to meet because they made time for each other. The ministry of external affairs spokesman while briefing the media about Modi-Netanyahu meeting said that Modi wanted to know the Israeli assessment of the Islamic State of Iran and Syria and Netanyahu explained. The spokesman, however, did not reveal what was the Israeli view, saying that he was not an Israeli government spokesman. Netanyahu had apparently remarked that the sky was the limit for cooperation between the two countries. Apart from agriculture, the people in India who favour closer relations with Israel are focused on intelligence sharing and on defence purchases. 

There is the minor difficulty that Israel cannot sell state-of-the-art and sensitive dual-use technologies to India without the assent of the Americans. It is a plain fact that the Indian hawks in foreign, defence and intelligence establishments favour ever closer ties with Tel Aviv. The expectation is that if there is a BJP or a BJP-led coalition government, India would then lean more towards Israel.

It is clear India-Israel relations would not radically change India’s West Asia policy, especially on Palestine, because of that basic principle of foreign policy, national interest. India is dependent on Arab oil and millions of Indians working in Gulf countries send home billions of dollars’ worth remittances. In the last BJP-led NDA term in office from 1998 to 2004, then foreign minister Jaswant Singh told an influential think tank in Israel that India-Israel relations remained distant because of domestic compulsions, a clear reference to what is perceived to be Congress’ Muslim appeasement. The BJP wants to break from Congress’ inherently Muslim-oriented West Asia policy. The truth is different from perception but perception is what counts. In truth, Muslims in India and the Congress for a long time interpreted the Palestinian issue as one of Muslim identity. Palestinians themselves, and the Arab countries, look upon it as a nationalist question. It has also been made clear both by Israeli and Arab leaders that India’s relationship with either Israel or the Arabs is not an exclusionary one. 

The BJP and the Congress would, however, continue to interpret India’s stance in West Asia in terms of their domestic politics. The Congress wants to appear to be pro-Muslim and it thinks one of the ways of doing so is to proclaim support for Palestine. The BJP, on the other hand, wants to challenge and break the Congress shibboleth. The BJP leaders also misunderstand the Israeli-Palestine issue as one between Jews and Muslims and not as that of two nationalisms — Arab and Zionist. It should not come as a surprise that if Modi were to press for closer ties with Israel because he and his party are impressed by the hard-line Israeli stance against terrorism of the Muslim groups in West Asia. The BJP wants to benefit from Israeli anti-terrorism expertise in dealing with the problem in the South Asian neighbourhood. But that would be a passing phase because the enduring relationship would be one based on national interests.