India Romancing Israel, Why Arabs Won't Complain!

They provide us military technology; we launch their satellites. For the past 25 years, India-Israel relations have thrived on such mutual, and rather discreet, backscratching. But, now Israel may ask for more—a strategic partnership, which may be too costly for Modi to concede 

- Prasannan R

Narendra Modi’s visit to Israel, from July 4 to 6, will disappoint many people—those in India who are expecting an outrage in the Arab world.

Unlike what many in India think, the Arabs are quietly cheering Modi. A month and a half ago, Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was in Delhi, where Modi briefed him about his visit. So had Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj, during her Israel-Palestine jaunt in January. Modi’s diplomats are in touch with Saudi Arabia, which has been secretly exchanging intelligence with Israel, often through the US and, of late, through India. At India’s behest, Israel received a retired Saudi general last year, who sought to mend the kingdom’s ties with Israel. Israeli drones, which have been effective against the Shia militant group Hizbullah, are being secretly shipped through South Africa to Saudi Arabia. The Saudis use them to spy on Iranian warships in the Persian Gulf and the Houthi rebels waging war in Yemen.

New gang-ups are forming in West Asia over new crises. The old Palestine problem hardly figures in them. So much so that there is no commemoration (by the Jews) or condemnation (by the Muslims) of the centenary of Arthur Balfour’s historic 1917 ‘declaration’ of a homeland for the Jewish people. Nor is anyone commemorating the centenary of the 1917 capture of Jerusalem by a Christian commander (after eight centuries of Muslim rule), leading an army of Indian Muslims and Hindus, and giving over the mandated territory to the Jews for building their homeland.