It is a good idea for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to pay an official visit to Israel. Mr Modi has earlier visited the Jewish state as chief minister of Gujarat, but when he goes to Israel later this year, as announced recently by external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj, he will become the first Indian head of government to do so. That single step will not just be an affirmation of the fully scaled-up nature of the bilateral relationship between the two nations — incorporating an effective military, intelligence and trading linkage — in the past decade and a half, but will also help bring greater openness and therefore accountability to the relationship, whose merits can be debated openly in Parliament and elsewhere.
The Indian right wing, including Mr Modi’s BJP, has been a strong votary of forging closer ties with Israel even when India publicly shunned that country on account of its policies toward the Palestinians. That perhaps makes it natural for the present Indian PM to embrace Israel openly.
But the time has also come for a clear acknowledgment of the multi-partisan nature of the India-Israel relationship in both nations (barring only the Left in India which, in international affairs, tends to deal in past slogans, not current realities). This means that the time was apposite for an Indian leader from the ranks of a party other than the BJP too to pay a long-overdue return visit to Israel. (India hosted Israeli PM Ariel Sharon in 2003.)
The present government maintains that while India will strengthen its strategic ties with Israel, its policy towards the Palestinians will remain unchanged. This means that the traditional Indian support from the days of Jawaharlal Nehru, and nonalignment, to the cause of a Palestinian homeland will brook no deviation. How pragmatic a course this turns out to be can only be seen in a crunch situation. However, the formula of a two-state solution, that was not on the table in the nonalignment days, does offer India a facesaver even when the Hindu right wing dominates the discourse on Israel.
The Israel-Palestine question apart, it was seen recently that New Delhi rightly showed itself to be on the side of the nuclear deal being worked out between the United States (among major powers) and Iran, an accord that was opposed tooth and nail not just by Israel but also all Arab capitals, particularly Riyadh. This essentially underlines the complex nature of the contours of all international relationships. The India-Israel link can be no exception. Indeed, it should be clearly understood that New Delhi will have the latitude to criticise military aggression against Palestinians by Israel even as it seeks to deepen its relationship with the Jewish state.
