President Pranab Mukherjee’s visit to Palestine and Israel, the first by an Indian head of state, is a diplomatic milestone that is equally reflective of how much India’s foreign policy has changed since 1947 and how much it hasn’t
President Pranab Mukherjee’s trip to Palestine and Israel is, of course, historic, given that no other Indian head of state has ever visited either before. While the trip to Palestine was important to reiterate India’s continued support for the Palestinian cause and its commitment to a ‘balanced’ West Asia policy, especially when bilateral ties with Israel are growing strong, the tour of Israel was a natural development. Ties between India and Israel have not only become robust, expanding from defence into agriculture and water management, education and hi-tech, but also more open, particularly under the Modi Government.
Even security cooperation is no longer brushed under the carpet, as is evident from Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Ya’alon’s India’s visit in February and the first joint military exercise, announced only days before President Mukherjee’s visit. Importantly, in his address to the Knesset, Mr Mukherjee expressed his gratitude to Israel “for rushing critical defence supplies in 1999”. While Israeli assistance to India during the Kargil war — a turning point in the bilateral which was established only in 1992 — is well-known, this is the first time that there has been such a high-profile, public acknowledgement of the same by the Government of India.
Similarly, in the backdrop of a spate of terror attacks in Israel, President Mukherjee’s blanket condemnation of all forms of terrorism was befitting the situation. It focused on the big picture but without taking sides in a complicated regional issue.
While these are welcome developments, if you were, however, looking for signs that the visit signalled an evolution in India’s foreign policy or a maturation of its world view, you’d be disappointed. Indeed, if there is one major takeaway from the President’s tour, it is this: The more things change, the more they stay the same. And so it has been, that despite the geo-politics of West Asia and the international order in general having changed significantly, that despite India’s relatively recent establishment of ties with Israel having added an entirely new dimension to the narrative, the President of India’s foreign policy pronouncements seem to have been mothballed since 1947.
Sample this: In this speech at Al Quds University in Ramallah, Mr Mukherjee reiterated how India has always been at the “forefront of promoting the Palestinian cause” and noted with pride that, “India voted against the partition of Palestine at the United Nations General Assembly in 1947” — in other words, India voted against the establishment of the State of Israel. While the vote is a fact of history, did the President really need to highlight it, given that Israel has emerged as one of India’s most important partners, and that, only hours later, Mr Mukherjee himself was to travel to the Jewish state? Some may argue that it was important for Mr Mukherjee to highlight India’s pro-Palestine stance to ‘balance’ India’s ties with Israel. Even if this is the case (it isn’t, for President himself said that India’s ties with Israel and Palestine are independent of the other), surely there are better ways to do the ‘balancing act’ without highlighting one’s own mistakes from the past.
India’s vote on the UN partition plan (which came only six months after India had favoured the minority plan at the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine which recommended an Arab state and a Jewish state) was the result of the Congress’s ideological support for the Arabs at the time. Two factors had led to the crystallisation of this ideological tilt within the party and thereby within the Indian foreign policy establishment: First, Mahatma Gandhi wasn’t comfortable with the Zionist movement and viewed the establishment of Israel as a colonial project, being imposed on the ‘Palestinian people’, by the same British empire that he was fighting at home. In doing so, he ignored the well-established fact that Jews had continuously lived in the region for thousands of years and were as much ‘Palestinian’ as the Arabs; but given the Mahatma’s political stature at the time, his views set the tone for all. Second, worried that the Congress would lose public support to the Muslim League, already a veritable political force at that time, the Mahatma and other senior leaders of the party resorted to several Muslim appeasement tactics: Pandering to the Arabs, without any diplomatic reciprocation from Arab states was one of them.
Almost 70 years later, India has made some course corrections — establishing diplomatic ties with Israel being the most significant. Yet, it is disappointing to see that even as we acknowledge these new developments, we refuse to do so wholeheartedly. And so it is that we hold on to outdated policy pronouncements in public, even though in practice, we have all but discarded them. It is true that India’s support for the Palestinian cause today is mostly lip-service, limited to routine budgetary allocations, the occasional gift or two, and some grandstanding at the UN. It is equally true that even though sometimes this posturing takes on anti-Israel hues, Israel itself isn’t particularly perturbed, partly because its own take on the Palestinian issue isn’t that much different from India’s (both want a two-state solution in keeping with the relevant UN resolutions etc) and partly because the Palestinian issue isn’t a really an irritant in bilateral ties. However, this issue isn’t about Israel or even Palestine. This is about the Government of India being pragmatic and confident enough to stand up for its own interests.
Again, some may argue that maintaining lip-service to the Palestinian cause is in India’s interests but that argument also stands on a slippery slope, particularly since Indian politicians often tend to over-compensate. For example, during the last Gaza war, some Left parliamentarians demanded that India snap diplomatic ties with Israel. Before that, in 2011, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh while addressing the UN General Assembly, had called for the establishment of a Palestinian state — with East Jerusalem as its capital. This was an unnecessary addition to India’s official position that has been carried forward till this day. It is not in keeping with ground realities and will prove to be a diplomatic headache for India, if and when there is a resolution to the Palestinian question.
Similarly, President Mukherjee underlined how India had “spearheaded” the international campaign for UN recognition of Palestinian statehood in 2012, and congratulated the people of Palestine on the unfurling of their national flag at the United Nations on September 30. No doubt, both of these were symbolic victories for the Palestinian leadership but they were also meaningless in terms of delivering peace and prosperity to the Palestinian people.
Of course, none of these pronouncements will change the ground realities in New Delhi, Jerusalem or Ramallah, but at some point, India needs to ensure that in its efforts to maintain its policy status quo, it doesn’t become party to a farce.
This article was published in Oped page of The Pioneer on October 15, 2015
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