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The only surprise in the subterranean tremors in New Delhi over reports out of London and Tel Aviv that Israel tried to sell radar components and electronic warfare systems to Pakistan in 2010 and in 2011 is that the effort appears to have come as surprise to sections of the strategic community in India. Israel’s desire to have a bridge with Pakistan is nothing new. When General Zia-ul-Haq was the dictator of Pakistan, considerable progress had been achieved towards a modus vivendi on engaging each other. His effort was cut short because Zia was worried that his secret liaison might be exposed or because he wanted to test the waters on how far he could go with Tel Aviv. Either way, in early 1986, Zia floated a trial balloon by publicly calling upon the Palestinians and Israelis to recognize each other.
Reaction within Pakistan to the General’s initiative was predictably adverse and Zia concluded that howsoever much he may have wanted to establish formal relations with Tel Aviv, it would undercut fundamentalist religious support for him at home. Of all the Pakistanis who have dealt with Israel away from the spotlight ever since the two states were created at the same time in curiously similar circumstances, General Zia had the least qualms about engaging Israel.
Zia was the butcher of Palestinians during the 1970 Black September crackdown in Jordan, where he was a brigadier at the head of a Pakistani unit ostensibly training the Jordanian army. The Pakistani army under Zia’s command effectively saved the Jordanian monarchy, of which the then Crown Prince was Hassan bin Talal. The former crown prince is married to Sarvath Ikramullah, the Calcutta-born daughter of Mohammed Ikramullah, Pakistan’s first secretary of state for foreign affairs. Princess Sarvath’s mother was Begum Shaista Suhrawardy Ikramullah. Her middle name tells its own story in the context of the Partition of the subcontinent.
If Israel did sell military equipment to Pakistan three years ago — both governments have emphatically denied the sale — it is only yet another manifestation of a logical attraction that each country has for the other going back to their infancy six and a half decades ago. It is a matter of record that the first president of Israel, Chaim Weizmann, wrote to Sir Zafarullah Khan, Pakistan’s first foreign minister, expressing hope that the two new nations could work together in dealing with common problems related to similarities in their birth. The most comprehensive documentation of such early contacts between Israel and Pakistan is available in a scholarly paper by P.R. Kumaraswamy, an Indian academic who lived in Israel for many years. The monograph, Beyond the Veil: Israel-Pakistan Relations,was written for the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University.
Ironically, some of those problems that Weizmann alluded to — the rise of religious conservatism and growing international isolation, to mention two — are beginning to manifest themselves all over again in both Israel and in Pakistan albeit in varying degrees of severity. It is only natural that there is a temptation in both Tel Aviv and Islamabad to find common ground. Only the very naïve in New Delhi would believe that Israel has contracted its interests in South Asia to India to a point where Tel Aviv considers Pakistan as diplomatically and militarily untouchable. It would be counter-productive, even self-destructing for Israel’s interests globally and regionally, to do so.
For those Indians who misunderstand and misrepresent Israel’s attitudes to Islam in the national discourse on foreign policy, it may be instructive to know that in some ways, engagement of Indian Muslims by the Israeli embassy in New Delhi has been more creative than that of some Arab embassies in Chanakyapuri. An Israeli ambassador in New Delhi once told this columnist that he had made it his mission to seriously and earnestly befriend one Muslim family in India every month as part of an outreach. Extend that rationale and contextualize dealings between Israel and Muslim countries and it is easy to understand why Islamabad holds a fascination for Tel Aviv that some in New Delhi cannot simply comprehend.
Israel has a thriving armaments industry. The advanced sophistication of Israel’s weapons technology makes it one of the most sought-after weapons exporters. At the same time, Israel’s arms exports are shrouded in secrecy. Notwithstanding the openness of Israeli society and its policies in many areas, its arms exports are not the subject of debates, discussions or a web of mandatory legislative approvals unlike in the United States of America or parts of Europe. In recent years, India has been a strategic beneficiary of Israel’s ability to camouflage its arms transfers and yet deliver them at critical times.
During the Cold War era, global arms sales had ideological underpinnings, but the end of communism meant that even in former Soviet republics and their satellite countries, weapons exporters, by and large, transformed into merchants of death by embracing the free market. Take another example, South Africa, a country that reflects some of the halo of Nelson Mandela long after he heralded its transition from apartheid and renounced office. South Africa’s global arms exports represent a dark underside of the white knight image of the ruling African National Congress.
Among the bigwigs in the global armaments industry, Israel is in a special position because it is capable of mixing ideology and business in shades of the Cold War. As a result, it can nuance its arms sales as missions with a larger purpose. India is an example of such an effort during the Kargil War, when critical Israeli weaponry and unconventional methods of their delivery helped turn the tide of the conflict in New Delhi’s favour. The flip side of this is that such a veneer has enabled Tel Aviv to push some very shady deals across the globe without attracting much attention or criticism. A year ago, Israel was reported to have signed a $1.6 billion arms deal with Azerbaijan, which gave the former an opening to the oil resources of the volatile Caspian region. If Israel ever decides to launch a pre-emptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, it can bank on IOUs from the Kurds for such access in return for years of dubious ties with Kurdish militants.
Israeli presence in some Gulf countries through networks that are seldom acknowledged may be relatively new. But three decades ago, Tel Aviv’s diplomats in London, some of whom later rose to high prominence in the Israeli government, told this columnist that their country harboured no ill will or enmity towards Gulf nations and were willing to do business with them. The denials of arms transfers between Israel and Pakistan by their governments may well be true, notwithstanding very credible sources cited in the original reports. But realistic assumptions about geopolitical equations demand that India must be prepared for such an eventuality. Tel Aviv cannot keep its back turned forever on a Muslim nation as large as Pakistan that is not Arab and does not share many of the problems that Israel and its Arab neighbours have struggled to deal with.
Pakistan has no history of anti-Semitism, in the sense anti-Semitism is practised elsewhere. Kumaraswamy records in his monograph that Zafarullah Khan made it a point to tell Israeli diplomats he met in New York in 1953 — including Abba Eban, who later became foreign minister — that Karachi’s small Jewish community was not harmed even when feelings were running in the city over developments in Palestine. Disappointments in India-Israel relations will be inevitable in the long run unless a greater degree of realism is injected into assessments of Israeli compulsions on Pakistan.
