<p>THE DRONE that struck Fujairah this week, injuring three Indian nationals in the petroleum zone, arrived at a moment of unusual strategic clarity in West Asia. Eight million Indians live and work across the Gulf. They are workers, nurses, engineers and accountants who have built their lives within economies that welcomed them across decades of quiet mutual dependence. When missiles fall on those cities, they fall near our people. That proximity is the most intimate fact of India's relationship with the region, and it opens a question that the broader turbulence of West Asia now makes unavoidable: whose stability is India actually invested in, and what is India prepared to do to defend it? What sent that drone is worth examining carefully. The argument is not with Iran as a civilisation, whose literary and philosophical inheritance belongs as much to the Indo-Persian world as to any other, and with whom India maintains real interests at Chabahar and real historical depth that no revolutionary ideology permanently erases. As part of the International North-South Transport Corridor Car rally ( 2018) I had driven on Iran roads from Chabahar to Tehran and Isfahan, and have personally experienced the warmth of the common Iranian people towards India. The quarrel is with something more specific: a theology that moves through proxies and financing networks with a consistency that connects Bahawalpur to Beirut to the petroleum zones of the Gulf. It is the same theology that asked Hindu tourists their religion in the meadows of Pahalgam before shooting them. The same that sorted a music festival in the Negev by belief before the killing began. The geography shifts. The method and the motivation do not. Those who argue that Israel has forfeited the sympathy of October 7 through the conduct of its military campaign in Gaza are not making an argument that can be dismissed. The civilian toll in Gaza is grave and serious. Global opinion has shifted, and that shift reflects a genuine and widespread unease that serious people, including many in Israel itself, share. Netanyahu's decisions in Gaza are contestable, and they are being contested, vigorously, within Israeli democracy itself. That internal argument is among the healthiest signs that Israeli civil society has not surrendered its conscience to its government. What is not contestable, or should not be, is whether a people who have faced expulsion and persecution across every continent for two millennia retain the right to a state and the right to defend it. India understands this distinction from its own experience. It has conducted difficult counter-terror operations while sustaining democratic institutions. Israel has been condemned internationally for those operations while continuing to hold that the condemnation, however sincerely felt, does not determine the legitimacy of self-defence. Strategic relationships built on that kind of historical understanding are not weakened by shifts in opinion polling. That India has held this understanding, not as a political position but as a civilisational prerogative, is written into its oldest history. The Bene Israeli Jews who arrived on the shores of Alibaug two thousand years ago found a country, nay a home that had no memory of hatred toward them, no architecture of exclusion. They learned Marathi. They wove the mangalsutra into their weddings. They burned coconut oil in their synagogues as Hindu temples do. Their belonging in India was never declared or debated. It was simply assumed, and it held, unbroken, across two thousand years. That history does not require India to endorse every decision made in Jerusalem. It does ask India to hold clearly the difference between questioning how a war is fought and questioning whether the people fighting it have the right to defend themselves at all. What gives this moment its weight is not the war in Gaza alone.It is the realignment taking shape around it. The Abraham Accords were concluded before October 7, and they reflected something the present conflict has obscured: the Arab world's own reckoning with radical Islamism as a threat to its own future. The Gulf states did not move toward Israel out of sentiment. They moved because they looked at what decades of organised radical violence had done to their neighbourhood and concluded that it could not be accommodated indefinitely. India reached the same understanding through its own long experience, from Mumbai in 1993 to Mumbai in 2008 to the meadows of Pahalgam last April. Operation Sindoor was its clearest expression. Striking the infrastructure of Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed with precision weapons that included Israeli-made Harop munitions and Spice bomb kits, India demonstrated that violence of this kind, wherever it originates, will be met with a considered and proportionate response. The name Sindoor honoured the women widowed in Pahalgam. That the weapons bearing that name were made in part by a country that has faced the same violence is not coincidence. It is what a genuine partnership looks like when it is tested. The I2U2 framework connecting India, Israel, the UAE and the United States is the formal expression of something that runs deeper than any framework. It is the coming together of peoples who have looked at the same problem from different places and arrived at the same conclusion: that it cannot be wished away or left for others to resolve. India's</p><p>place in that effort is not marginal. It is, by the depth of its history, the presence of its people across the Gulf, and the experience it has accumulated in defending itself, entirely natural. The question that Fujairah has placed before India is not unfamiliar. It has arrived before, in different cities and different forms, from the same source. What is different now is that India does not face it alone. The partnership connecting New Delhi to Tel Aviv to Abu Dhabi, built on shared experience and a shared refusal to look away from difficult truths, is deeper and more capable than it has ever been. </p>.<p><strong>The author is a former MP and editor of Namaste Shalom, India's magazine on India-Israel friendship.</strong></p>
<p>THE DRONE that struck Fujairah this week, injuring three Indian nationals in the petroleum zone, arrived at a moment of unusual strategic clarity in West Asia. Eight million Indians live and work across the Gulf. They are workers, nurses, engineers and accountants who have built their lives within economies that welcomed them across decades of quiet mutual dependence. When missiles fall on those cities, they fall near our people. That proximity is the most intimate fact of India's relationship with the region, and it opens a question that the broader turbulence of West Asia now makes unavoidable: whose stability is India actually invested in, and what is India prepared to do to defend it? What sent that drone is worth examining carefully. The argument is not with Iran as a civilisation, whose literary and philosophical inheritance belongs as much to the Indo-Persian world as to any other, and with whom India maintains real interests at Chabahar and real historical depth that no revolutionary ideology permanently erases. As part of the International North-South Transport Corridor Car rally ( 2018) I had driven on Iran roads from Chabahar to Tehran and Isfahan, and have personally experienced the warmth of the common Iranian people towards India. The quarrel is with something more specific: a theology that moves through proxies and financing networks with a consistency that connects Bahawalpur to Beirut to the petroleum zones of the Gulf. It is the same theology that asked Hindu tourists their religion in the meadows of Pahalgam before shooting them. The same that sorted a music festival in the Negev by belief before the killing began. The geography shifts. The method and the motivation do not. Those who argue that Israel has forfeited the sympathy of October 7 through the conduct of its military campaign in Gaza are not making an argument that can be dismissed. The civilian toll in Gaza is grave and serious. Global opinion has shifted, and that shift reflects a genuine and widespread unease that serious people, including many in Israel itself, share. Netanyahu's decisions in Gaza are contestable, and they are being contested, vigorously, within Israeli democracy itself. That internal argument is among the healthiest signs that Israeli civil society has not surrendered its conscience to its government. What is not contestable, or should not be, is whether a people who have faced expulsion and persecution across every continent for two millennia retain the right to a state and the right to defend it. India understands this distinction from its own experience. It has conducted difficult counter-terror operations while sustaining democratic institutions. Israel has been condemned internationally for those operations while continuing to hold that the condemnation, however sincerely felt, does not determine the legitimacy of self-defence. Strategic relationships built on that kind of historical understanding are not weakened by shifts in opinion polling. That India has held this understanding, not as a political position but as a civilisational prerogative, is written into its oldest history. The Bene Israeli Jews who arrived on the shores of Alibaug two thousand years ago found a country, nay a home that had no memory of hatred toward them, no architecture of exclusion. They learned Marathi. They wove the mangalsutra into their weddings. They burned coconut oil in their synagogues as Hindu temples do. Their belonging in India was never declared or debated. It was simply assumed, and it held, unbroken, across two thousand years. That history does not require India to endorse every decision made in Jerusalem. It does ask India to hold clearly the difference between questioning how a war is fought and questioning whether the people fighting it have the right to defend themselves at all. What gives this moment its weight is not the war in Gaza alone.It is the realignment taking shape around it. The Abraham Accords were concluded before October 7, and they reflected something the present conflict has obscured: the Arab world's own reckoning with radical Islamism as a threat to its own future. The Gulf states did not move toward Israel out of sentiment. They moved because they looked at what decades of organised radical violence had done to their neighbourhood and concluded that it could not be accommodated indefinitely. India reached the same understanding through its own long experience, from Mumbai in 1993 to Mumbai in 2008 to the meadows of Pahalgam last April. Operation Sindoor was its clearest expression. Striking the infrastructure of Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed with precision weapons that included Israeli-made Harop munitions and Spice bomb kits, India demonstrated that violence of this kind, wherever it originates, will be met with a considered and proportionate response. The name Sindoor honoured the women widowed in Pahalgam. That the weapons bearing that name were made in part by a country that has faced the same violence is not coincidence. It is what a genuine partnership looks like when it is tested. The I2U2 framework connecting India, Israel, the UAE and the United States is the formal expression of something that runs deeper than any framework. It is the coming together of peoples who have looked at the same problem from different places and arrived at the same conclusion: that it cannot be wished away or left for others to resolve. India's</p><p>place in that effort is not marginal. It is, by the depth of its history, the presence of its people across the Gulf, and the experience it has accumulated in defending itself, entirely natural. The question that Fujairah has placed before India is not unfamiliar. It has arrived before, in different cities and different forms, from the same source. What is different now is that India does not face it alone. The partnership connecting New Delhi to Tel Aviv to Abu Dhabi, built on shared experience and a shared refusal to look away from difficult truths, is deeper and more capable than it has ever been. </p>.<p><strong>The author is a former MP and editor of Namaste Shalom, India's magazine on India-Israel friendship.</strong></p>