by Seth J. Frantzman
Narendra Modi’s arrival in Israel and his planned address to the Knesset underscore how shared history, security challenges, and geopolitics have turned India and Israel into natural allies.
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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Israel for a historic visit and addressed the Knesset on Wednesday, a symbolic gesture that underscores the close relationship between the two countries.
This relationship has grown in leaps and bounds over the past few decades. This is due to several reasons, and foremost among them is that Israel and India share many things in common. Both are democracies, and they share a common ancient history in their respective regions.
The importance of India-Israel ties is widely recognized.
“Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision to visit Israel, for the first time since 2017, and to address the Knesset for the first time ever, is a significant milestone,” former deputy national security adviser Col. (res.) Eran Lerman wrote in the Jerusalem Strategic Tribune this month.
Modi and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have built a personal relationship, and India-Israel ties have grown over the years, he said.
“What truly cemented the relationship was Israel’s willingness and ability to respond with remarkable alacrity to India’s military needs during the Kargil crisis in 1999,” Lerman wrote. “Soon enough, Israeli weapon systems worth billions of dollars were pouring in, with arrangements to ‘Make in India’ some of their key components. Military cooperation was complemented by intelligence sharing, as both countries found common ground in facing Islamist terrorism and radicalism.”
India and Israel are natural allies for a variety of reasons, including their rich histories. India is the world’s largest Hindu country, and Israel is the world’s only Jewish state.
The independence movements in both countries formed in part during British rule. The British ruled India directly since 1858 and had a role in South Asia since the 17th century.
In the Middle East, the British also had long ties to the region and came to control Mandate Palestine after World War I.
While British rule was shorter in the land that became Israel, it adopted similar methods to those in India. They included an attempt to balance the demands of the various communities.
In India, this resulted in a partition plan that led to the creation of Pakistan and India. In Israel, the partition plan led to an invasion of the country by Arab states.
Israel-India's shared independence stories
This shared challenge of coming into independence in 1947-1948 amid war unites India and Israel, but in different ways.
Israel’s independence was largely rejected in the region, and Arab states refused to recognize the country. Israel had to reach out to states on the periphery, working with Turkey, Iran, and countries in Africa in the 1950s through the ’70s.
India faced a different path forward. The British partition plan for India was similar in its complexity to the one it came up with for Palestine.
In South Asia, the goal was to create a Pakistan that encompassed both eastern and western portions. What is now Bangladesh was part of Pakistan until 1971. This pitted India against a largely Muslim country.
The British partition plan for Palestine didn’t exactly turn out as planned. It envisioned an Arab state comprising several cantons, including the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, parts of the Galilee, and Jaffa, with an international zone in Jerusalem.
It’s not widely recognized that the British partition plans essentially saddled these states with endless war. This may not have been the British goal, but it was the result.
Anyone looking at a map would conclude that the Arab state the British envisioned in the 1947 plan for Palestine was destined to be a non-contiguous disaster that would essentially lead to civil strife. The Jewish leadership in 1947 accepted the plan but prepared for it to fail. And fail, it did.
With the invasion of the country by Arab militias and communal violence, it became clear that the Jewish underground armies, the Hagana and the Irgun, would have to take the country by force against tremendous odds. They succeeded, and by the end of 1948, they had vanquished Arab irregular militias and the Egyptians.
Hundreds of thousands of Arabs fled the area that became Israel. They had also fought the Jordanians to a standstill. This set up decades of continued war that only began to end with the Egyptian peace treaty in 1979.
India’s path to independence was also bloody. Some 14 million people were displaced and became refugees, with Muslims fleeing to Pakistan and Hindus to India.
As many as one million people may have been killed, according to a Red Cross report. This also set up decades of war with Pakistan.
Some of that conflict occurred in Kashmir, the disputed region on the border of India and Pakistan. India has faced decades of terrorist threats as well, with Islamist extremists targeting the country.
The terrorist attacks against India, often linked to Pakistan, have also targeted Jews in India. For instance, the 2008 attack in Mumbai targeted the local Chabad House.
During the Cold War, India was a leader of the nonaligned movement. As such, it often sided with the Arab states in critique of Israel.
This began to change when the Congress Party in India began losing elections, and the right-leaning BJP, more rooted in Hindu politics, rose to power.
Israeli politics underwent a similar transformation from left-leaning Labor Zionism to the more right-wing politics of today. One could argue that these are natural developments as people embrace religion and nationalism more today.
India and Israel are also linked increasingly by geopolitics. Both countries sit on the flanks as bookends of a region.
For instance, South Asia shares a border with the mostly Islamic Middle East, which stretches from Pakistan to Turkey. Israel is on the other flank, sitting on the Mediterranean.
History tells us that this region of the Levant has historically been controlled by similar powers.
That means there is a natural geopolitical path that links Turkey to Pakistan. This is the road that Alexander the Great used when he conquered the Persian Empire and even tried to invade India.
The Ottoman, Persian, Roman, Parthian, Babylonian, and Assyrian Empires have all anchored themselves along this geopolitical road, with bookends in India and Israel.
Today, this natural connection is linked via the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC). Other variations of this have been proposed, such as the I2U2 group of India, Israel, the US, and the UAE.
Today, Israel’s leadership increasingly sees this link between Israel and India as important. It also believes Israel faces rising challenges from Turkey and other countries as Iran declines in its power.
India’s strategy may be different. It is not confrontational with other countries and is pursuing peaceful relations that balance East and West. Israel’s political leadership is more confrontational.
This is also anchored in the historical challenges faced by Israel and India. India was a leader in the nonaligned movement and sees itself as hedging between East and West.
Israel, a close ally of the US, tends to view itself as more isolated. Nevertheless, both countries are natural allies today and will be in the future.
Seth J. Frantzman
Source: https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-887920
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