India has separated its multilateral dealings with Israel from its bilateral ties

Did India anticipate that the ticking time bomb in Palestine would go off any time and stuck to its time-tested Palestine policy on the multilateral track?

It is as if India had anticipated the flare-up in Israel-Palestine and the ongoing fight there. After the Narendra Modi government came to power in 2014, there has been an all-round intensification of India’s relations with Israel. Based on the premise that India and Israel are now the best of friends, Israel has been telling India for some years now that there is dissonance between the bilateral ties and its extension on the multilateral track. Israel, therefore, has been cajoling India to modify its stand at the United Nations and other global platforms on matters pertaining to West Asia in general and Israel-Palestine in particular.

It is to the credit of the Modi government’s foreign policy managers that they have stood firm and steadfastly refused to give in on this score. The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) ended its silence five days after Hamas broke through blockaded Gaza into Israel on October 7. When MEA Spokesperson Arindam Bagchi did so, India reiterated its long-standing Arab-Israel policy at the multilateral level.

At the same time, on the bilateral front, India is “stand(ing) in solidarity with Israel in this difficult hour,” as Modi conveyed to his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu who dialled New Delhi on October 10. This ‘long-standing’ policy has been in place since the time Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao established full diplomatic relations with Israel 1992.

Bagchi reiterated it: “Our policy in this regard has been long-standing and consistent. India has always advocated the resumption of direct negotiations towards establishing a sovereign, independent and viable State of Palestine living within secure and recognised borders, side by side at peace with Israel. That position remains the same.”

As West Asia once again descends into turmoil, such an Indian position is critical to its foreign policy. Experience so far suggests that the Modi government will not waver, but stick to it. Other countries, especially some of those in the Arab world which normalised relations with Tel Aviv — or were on that path — did not separate and quarantine their multilateral dealings with Israel from their bilateral relations, like India did. These countries are now in a quandary.

The most pronounced discomfort on this score is in Saudi Arabia. Riyadh’s policy towards Tel Aviv, which has been evolving since its neighbours signed the Abraham Accords in 2020 with the Jewish State, is now in tatters. Least so in Morocco, which has a long history of entente between the kingdom’s own Jewish community and Israel’s.

In private interactions this week among diplomats of some of these countries and officials in New Delhi, these Arab envoys have wondered if India anticipated that the ticking time bomb in Palestine would go off any time and stuck to its time-tested Palestine policy on the multilateral track. The world at large may have backburned the Palestine issue, but every month, the UN Security Council discusses the festering dispute. Throughout India’s recent two-year UN Security Council membership, India reiterated its long-standing Arab-Israel policy, which Bagchi has just recommitted MEA to.

The Modi government does not see its relations with Israel and Palestine as a zero-sum game. Come what may, no Palestinian will forget that Modi was the first Indian Prime Minister to visit Palestine. He made that visit with great sensitivity: which cannot be said of many other world leaders who have visited Palestine in several previous decades. Modi did not hyphenate his trip to Palestine and Israel. He also chose not to go to Palestine via Israel and occupied territories as many leaders do. That is an affront to Palestinians, but they suffer the insult when some world leaders choose such an easier route by road. Modi went to Amman, where King Abdullah II loaned Modi his private helicopter to fly to Ramallah, the seat of the Palestine National Authority (PNA).

Modi’s reception ceremony would have been the stuff of diplomatic folklore if only the capital he was visiting was Washington DC or Paris. Call it coincidence or a quirk of fate, Modi arrived in Ramallah along with three Indian Ambassadors (called Resident Representatives) to the State of Palestine — T S Tirumurti, who established the Indian representation in Gaza, B Balabhaskar, who succeeded him once removed, and Anish Ranjan, the then incumbent representative. The affection the Palestinians showered on these three men, whom they knew intimately, convinced Modi of how dedicated personnel can be diplomatic assets.

Modi has since used that as a yardstick in choosing his envoys whenever a panel of names reaches his desk. 

(KP Nayar has extensively covered West Asia and reported from Washington as a foreign correspondent for 15 years.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.