Krishna’s Israel visit a landmark
External affairs minister S.M. Krishna’s visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories earlier this week was a landmark one. In this India displayed, for the first time, open even-handedness, compromising neither its core interests nor core beliefs. In Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, the minister candidly laid down the significance of India-Israel relations, speaking without hesitation of the reasons why cooperation with Israel was necessary. He stressed agriculture: this country has in recent years counted on Israeli aid in technologies and techniques relating to dryland farming. But mention must be made of the defence equipment and technologies that we get from Israel, which are vitally needed on our borders. The unmanned aerial vehicles and night-fighting equipment of Israeli make have vastly improved India’s management of the border regions with Pakistan and enhanced our capabilities to neutralise infiltration by terrorist groups. It was therefore natural for Mr Krishna to mention anti-terrorism cooperation. In recent years, Israel has emerged as a significant source of military hardware alongside Russia and some Western countries. Besides agriculture and defence, the two nations are also exploring the supply of gas from Israel, thus diversifying energy supply sources.
The external affairs minister was received with warmth in Ramallah, headquarters of the Palestinian Authority, after his talks in the Israeli capital, indicating the importance the Palestinians attach to India’s unflinching political support for their cause of “an independent, sovereign and viable Palestinian state”, to quote from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s speech at the UN General Assembly in September, where India made a strong pitch for granting Palestine UN membership in the face of opposition from the United States and its Western allies.
Friendship with both Israel and the Palestinians is not a zero-sum game — one cannot be at the cost of the other, although certain constituencies here continue to adopt such a shortsighted approach. This was underlined without blushing during Mr Krishna’s recent sojourn. If it is important for various reasons to do business with Israel, it is no less necessary to uphold the principle of Palestinian rights and make efforts to give it practical shape.
This indeed has been the approach of several leading Islamic states in West Asia. Not surprisingly, Pakistan’s former President Pervez Musharraf, who is hoping to return to his country soon to play a bigger political role there, had recently alluded to many Islamic states doing business with Israel, overt or covert, as he advocated that his own country too normalise ties with Israel. As India’s economy expands and its security perceptions mature, so should its approach to various elements of the international community.
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