The legendary Zionist toast "Next Year in Jerusalem!" says it all. It expresses the undying optimism and tenacity of the no longer Wandering Jew which Narendra Modi must beware of when he visits Israel. It also echoes the soaring territorial ambition that has sustained Jewry through the ages which Modi must not be led into endorsing.Understanding the pitfalls, P.V. Narasimha Rao, who was well versed in the complexities of diplomatic manipulation, was careful to stress even while laying the Yellow Brick Road along which Modi trips so merrily that he still sought "justice for the Palestinians".
Sushma Swaraj's claim to "fully support the Palestinian cause" needs much more authoritative and categorical reiteration at a time when even Israel's own attorney-general denounces as "unconstitutional" Benjamin Netanyahu's latest law to "regularise" some of the 140 illegal settlements that house more than 600,000 Jewish settlers in the conquered West Bank and East Jerusalem. So far as one can recall, Modi has said nothing about this continued aggression which lies at the root of Arab frustration and bitterness and spawns a range of terrorist organizations, including the deadly Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Modi has not said anything either about the killing or wounding of five or six ethnic Indians in Trump's US. The only common factor seems to be subservience to the United States of America. It's revealing of New Delhi's thinking that Christian charitable activity is about the only issue over which it is prepared to challenge the US.
Foreign policy is more than the pursuit of sectarian interest. It must also be rooted in ethics. That is why the Americans artfully cloaked their struggle for power with the Soviet Union as the epic battle between Democracy and Darkness. That is also why Franklin D. Roosevelt supposedly remarked of either Anastasio Somoza or Rafael Trujillo - both were ruthless dictators, Somoza of Nicaragua and Trujillo of the Dominican Republic - "He may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch." Being essential to American strategy, they had to be garbed for public consumption in virtue they were far from possessing.
India and Israel need each other. India is the largest buyer of Israeli military equipment. Israel is India's second-largest defence supplier. Israel can further the "Make in India" campaign by helping to develop a medium-range surface-to-air missile. Israel has shown it can provide invaluable security intelligence about India's febrile neighbourhood. A free trade agreement is on the cards. Israel's triumph over the Negev desert which covers 55 per cent of the land area long ago prompted an offer to make the Thar desert bloom. I don't know which surprised me more when I visited Beersheba, the Negev's principal town, 47 years ago - genetically created blue roses blossoming in the desert or the very dark Malayalis without a word of English or Hindi packing them who were introduced to me as Indian Jews. Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised. Kerala is a hoary land of mystery. Daniel Patrick Moynihan told a Congressional committee it supplied teak for King Solomon's palace. Legend says that when Thomas the Apostle landed at the Roman staging post of Muziris to found the world's oldest Christian church, a Jewish girl welcomed him on the flute. Cochin's Paradesi Jews, who founded the world's first Jewish state centuries before Israel was a gleam in Chaim Weizmann's eye, claimed descent from refugees who fled Nebuchadnezzar's sacking of Jerusalem.
Whispers of modern India playing footsie with the Jewish state that leaked out occasionally indicated discussions about paramilitary settlements along the Chinese border like the armed Zionist kibbutzim, buying Israel's Uzi sub-machine gun, and David Ben-Gurion sending enough 120-millimetre Tampella mortars and ammunition and spares for two regiments when Jawaharlal Nehru sought military help in 1962. Israel helped to organize the Research and Analysis Wing and train commandos for India's National Security Guards, while the United Nations delegations of the two countries consulted each other. When I suggested to P.N. Haksar, then custodian of Indira Gandhi's conscience, that Israel was an Asian country, he retorted, "Only geographically. Listen to their accents!" The connection remained clandestine until Narasimha Rao instructed Lalit Mansingh, then posted in Washington, to start a dialogue with two influential Jewish organizations, the Anti-Defamation League of Bnai B'rith and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Like "Looking East to Look West", Narasimha Rao courted Israel, responded to overtures from Taiwan and initiated ties with post-apartheid South Africa as part of his bigger foreign policy reorientation to close the chasm between India and the US.
If I was surprised by the Malayalis in Beersheba, Mansingh was astonished to find so many influential Americans were Jews with Israeli connections like Stephen Solarz, the Congressman who quoted Tagore at the drop of a tear. No wonder Harry Truman lost no time in reneging on Franklin Delano Roosevelt's assurance to Saudi Arabia's King Abdul Aziz about a Palestinian homeland because he had to answer to hundreds of thousands of people who were anxious for the success of Zionism but he did not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among his constituents. Fearing an angry reaction from the opposite corner, Narasimha Rao thought it prudent to tell people that Yasser Arafat had actually recommended formal bilateral ties citing the Egypt-Israel rapprochement which had helped the Palestinian cause. In the event, a solitary letter from Syed Shahabuddin, the diplomat-turned-politician who died the other day, was the only protest when India and Israel established full diplomatic relations on January 29, 1992, five days after China and Israel exchanged ambassadors. The muted reaction was a reminder of the shortness of public memory. Modi's powerful public relations machinery may ensure that the renewed vigour with which friendship with Israel is now being pursued will also be accepted with equanimity. That does not mean the enthusiasm of what can only be called the Hindu neo-Right doesn't threaten a balance that has so far enabled India to pursue its Israeli interests with a clear conscience and without jeopardizing the peace process. This is especially relevant because delinking ties with Israel and the Palestinians may prove as difficult as the Americans find delinking ties with India and Pakistan. Every action the US takes in relation to Pakistan has an instant Indian reaction. The reverse is equally true. If things are less fraught in the Israeli-Palestinian equation, it is mainly because Palestinians are a dependent people at Israel's mercy.
This vulnerability is highlighted more and more every day as the Oslo process fades from memory. Egypt, once the strident voice of non-aligned and Afro-Asian justice, barely speaks now that it is the biggest recipient of American aid after Israel. Instead, it regularly floods and destroys the tunnels that the beleaguered inhabitants of Gaza regard as their principal lifeline. But even Cairo and Amman will be moved to protest if Donald Trump's cavalier dismissal of the promised Palestinian homeland when Benjamin Netanyahu met him recently leads to the US embassy being shifted from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Nor can Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the other pro-Western oil-rich Gulf states remain acquiescent.
A first ever visit to Israel by an Indian prime minister may be a fitting celebration of the 25th anniversary of the diplomatic relations Narasimha Rao established. But one feels that had he been alive, the wily Telugu would have handled the situation with finesse. He would have avoided giving the impression of abdicating the scope for independent diplomacy, surrendering Palestinian interests and supporting Zionist dreams of ruling a mythic Eretz Israel, the traditional Jewish name for an area of indefinite geographical extension in the Southern Levant. He would have known that immediate implementation of the two-state solution offers the only way of healing the festering sore of grievances that are a major cause for Islamic terrorism.
