The East Moves West: India, China, and Asia's Growing Presence in the Middle East

CHAPTER FIVE. ASIA AND ISRAEL

133 CHAPTER FIVE ASIA AND ISRAEL IN VIEW OF THE extreme polarization concerning the Arab-Israeli conflict found in many Western and most Muslim countries, it is significant that the Asian countries with majority non-Muslim populations have cooperative and friendly relations with Israel and that Israel has good relations with several Muslim countries in the Caucasus and Central Asia. It therefore is useful to summarize Israel’s relationships with key Asian countries in a separate chapter. The most interesting have been the close ties between the Israeli defense technology sector and India’s and China’s defense establishments . Those ties not only reflect the mutual benefit that all parties perceive in their relationships but also demonstrate the ease with which both India and China also sustain good relations with countries and entities that are extremely hostile to Israel. INDIA AND ISRAEL While India and Israel now cooperate in a wide range of areas, India’s “Nehruvian” policies kept the two countries apart for more than 40 years. In the 1930s and 1940s, Gandhi, Nehru, and most of the Indian National Congress, which had a significant Muslim membership, opposed the creation of a Jewish nation and the partition of Palestine and eventually voted against Israel’s admission to the United Nations. Most of the leaders in congress disagreed with the idea of a state based on confessional allegiance, 134 THE KEY ASIAN PLAYERS a system of governance that allocates political power proportionally to religious groups. India and Israel took small diplomatic steps in the early 1950s—India recognized Israel in 1950, and Israel opened a consulate in Mumbai in 1953—but relations and cooperation remained at a low level and the two countries did not establish full diplomatic relations until after the end of the cold war, in January 1992. Indo-Israeli ties remained at a low level throughout the cold war for both ideological and practical reasons. India’s large Muslim population was, of course, a factor. But apart from India’s opposition to the idea of Israel as a religious state, India was very active in the Non-Aligned Movement , which had a large Arab—and anti-Israeli—contingent. In addition, India purposefully directed its gaze toward the Arab states in the hopes of preventing Pakistan from gaining their support by making Kashmir into a Hindu-Muslim issue and, as today, of securing a stable supply of energy. Furthermore, Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s prime minister until 1964, was a close friend of Egypt’s Nasser, who was an implacable foe of Israel.1 While India and Israel periodically cooperated on mutual interests, such as Israeli aid to India during the 1962 war with China or proposed plans to destroy the Pakistani reactor at Kahuta in the 1980s,2 their public relationship often was acrimonious, especially after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, which put India’s allies in direct conflict with Israel. In fact, in 1975 India publicly supported and funded the Palestine Liberation Organization and voted for the UN resolution to equate Zionism with racism.3 IMPROVED POLITICAL RELATIONS The decline of the Soviet Union forced India to reevaluate its foreign policy. That led to an opening of the Indian economy and a desire to trade with high-tech states, including Israel. The new approach to foreign policy, combined with the new initiatives to end the Arab-Israeli conflict in the wake of the 1991 Gulf War and the push by the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to exchange ambassadors, argued for an opening toward Israel. Accordingly, the two countries established full diplomatic relations in 1992.4 For nearly a decade afterward, commercial trade in arms and other goods thrived and ties were quietly strengthened. Diplomatic progress was visible in 1996, when Israel’s president, Ezer Weizman, led a business delegation to India, and in 2000, when the Indian and Israeli foreign ministers exchanged visits.5 It was, however, the highly symbolic September 2003 visit of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to India that indicated how far bilateral ties ASIA AND ISRAEL 135 had come. Sharon’s visit laid the groundwork for Indo-Israeli military exercises and agreements in the fields of the environment, health, illicit traffic in drugs, visa waivers for diplomatic service personnel, and an educational cultural exchange program.6 In the same year, India and Israel issued the Delhi Statement on Friendship and Cooperation, in which they agreed to cooperate closely on counterterrorism and...