New Delhi: Having at one time been considered a state with whom relations should be maintained at a distance, Israel is now changing and from having an image of a military state, lacking any socio-cultural complexity, or indeed any contradictory political views among its people, it is now being wooed by most countries including India.
India and Israel share very close ties and have agreements in several fields, including defence, science, technology. India is the largest buyer of Israeli military equipment and Israel is the second-largest defence supplier to India after Russia. From 1999 to 2009, the military business between the two nations was worth around $9 billion. Military and strategic ties between the two nations extend to intelligence sharing on terrorist groups and joint military training.
As of 2014, India is the third-largest Asian trade partner of Israel, and tenth-largest trade partner overall. In 2014, bilateral trade, excluding military sales, stood at US$ 4.52 billion. Relations further expanded during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration, with India abstaining from voting against Israel in the United Nations in several resolutions. As of 2015, the two nations are negotiating an extensive bilateral free trade agreement, focusing on areas such as information technology, biotechnology, and agriculture.
One of the major factors for Israel’s growth is the large Jewish lobby in the U.S. which has been working almost overtime to ensure that American support for Israel remains specially at one time when it was surrounded by about a dozen hostile states and had also gone to war with them in what is described as the Yom Kippur war which lasted for about 13 days in 1973.
Though India officially recognised Israel in 1950, the two countries established full diplomatic ties only on January 29, 1992. As of December 2020, India is among 164 United Nations (UN) member states to have diplomatic ties with Israel. It is significant to recall here that Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he stepped down at Tel Aviv airport in July 2017, became the first Indian prime minister to visit Israel.
Mr Modi, had said India and the Jewish state share a “deep and centuries-old” connection, and the visit was seen as a turning point on India’s position on Israel. Mr Modi called the visit “ground-breaking” as he was met at the airport by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
For years, Israel and India have been working closely together on counter-terrorism and defence issues and India has been a regular customer of arms from Israel (the Jewish state is a loaded term). The co-operation ranges from a jointly built air defence system to India buying drones, radar, cyber security and communication systems.
Aside from defence deals, the two countries are also expanding co-operation in other areas, notably Israel helping India to improve agricultural productivity and food security. The two countries are set to build closer ties. India and Israel have had diplomatic relations for 25 years.
In the past however, the relationship has always been a balancing act given India’s sizeable Muslim population and the country’s dependence on oil imports from Arab countries and Iran. Mr Netanyahu had described Mr Modi’s visit as “historic”, saying it would “deepen co-operation in a wide range of fields – security, agriculture, water, energy – basically in almost every field Israel is involved in”.
For India, Israel became strategic partner over the years and it has moved from one extreme to the other – from settler-colonial-state to the all-powerful-friend-India-must-have. Either way, it is disabling simplistic, losing sight of a people grappling with their political destiny, like the people of India, or for that matter any post-colonial state in Asia, a country still having to negotiate between religion and modernity, nationalism and universalism, neo-liberalism and the welfare state, and still having to pursue conflict resolution / management”. History and the image of Israel is a controversial matter in India. Israel has been a political and ideological question for India’s political class even before the establishment of the state in 1948. Israel has emerged as strong, stable and developed state with democratic system out of a deeply divided society. Its existential struggle since inception is yet not over and it has worked around many of the fundamental issues and achieved innovation and technological advancement that have given it the status of Start-Up Nation.
With a view to give a broader perspective on various aspects of the country, Dr Khinvraj Jangid, Associate Professor and Director, Jindal Centre for Israeli Studies will be conducting a four-day online workshop on this subject.
This workshop would enable the participants get a broader and more comprehensive understanding of what is the idea of State of Israel. How should one approach Israel and its foreign policy, its security policy of deterrence rather than co-existence with the Palestinian people and what can one learn about politics, war and peace by understating Israel are some of the key questions to be explored in this workshop.
The workshop would discuss a wide range of issues such as India-Israel relations and Israeli diplomacy, Zionism and the establishment of the State of Israel as also the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict which does not seem to be yet resolved and recently it had indeed flared up.
Dr Jangid who has specialised on Israel would give a detailed view of the relations Israel has with various nations and its role in the international arena as also one area of interest would be Israel as a start-up nation considering that it was virtually built on a land which was not too fertile.
