On July 3, the Modi government overturned nearly 80 years of India’s commitment to the Palestinian cause, to which we have adhered since Mahatma Gandhi declared, “Palestine belongs to the Arabs as England belongs to the English and France to the French.”
For the first time ever, we abstained on a resolution that pertained to Israel’s iniquities. The resolution was based on a report commissioned by the UN Commission on Human Rights. Only one country—the US, of course—voted against; 41 countries, including longstanding friends of Israel such as France, Holland and Japan, voted in favour; and five, including India, abstained.
The disappointment among the Palestinians is palpable, as is the exultation among the Israelis. While the Israeli ambassador “appreciated” and “thanked” those “including India” who did not support the resolution, the Palestinian ambassador said they were “shocked… the voting of India has broken our happiness”. Yet, our representative at the UN commission and the foreign ministry’s official spokesman had the gall to claim that “there is no change in India’s longstanding position on support to the Palestinian cause.”
It is evident that the Palestinians have not been befooled. Their foreign minister, Riyad al-Maliki, said that while the overall vote “reflected a strong support by the international community at large,” India had abstained. Shame! On the other hand, the Israeli media had no reason to be circumspect. Wrote well-known Israeli journalist Itamar Eichner: “India’s decision to abstain from voting… symbolises an unprecedented diplomatic victory for Israel.”
The Israeli journalist’s stance is echoed in the Palestinian ambassador’s statement that India’s vote marks “a clean break from the ethos of non-alignment” and our explanation of vote was “unconvincing”. The Israeli journalist goes on to quote “diplomatic officials in Israel” as saying that this change “mirrors a warming of relations between the prime ministers”. The key to this “romance between Jerusalem and Delhi” lies, he finds, in Modi having told Israel’s elder statesman Shimon Peres that, when he visited Israel as Gujarat’s chief minister, he “felt a great closeness with Israel, something that has influenced me to this day”.
Imaging: Job P.K.
Thus, the responsibility for endangering India’s relations with the Arab world and the solidarity of NAM rests squarely on the shoulders of one man—Narendra Modi. It took one phone call from the Israeli prime minister for India to abandon seven decades of carefully cultivated relations with the Arabs in general, and the Palestinians in particular. Please remember that this is a region which is host to nearly seven million Indian expatriate workers, whose remittances constitute the largest contribution to our foreign exchange earnings. It is also the region on which we depend for energy and hence for Make in India, too! In one fell blow, Modi has degraded us from being the best friend of the Arab world to its most doubtful supporter.
Modi’s “closeness” to Israel has blinded him to the report’s finding that 2,251 Palestinians were killed, over 1,600 wounded and some 5,00,000 displaced by the ruthless Israeli bombing of Gaza. The report says while Hamas did not use Palestinians as “human shields”, the Israelis did so using Palestinian children. Presumably, Modi, who regards the Muslims butchered on his watch similar to “puppy dogs”, also considers these children as “accidental victims” who came under a car.
The foreign ministry has covered up this shocking departure from elementary morality by saying that we abstained because India does not recognise the International Criminal Court (ICC). This is a black lie. India voted for UN Security Council resolutions on Libya and Mali that explicitly referred matters to the ICC. Russia and China, which also do not accept the jurisdiction of the ICC, had no difficulty voting for the resolution. Modi is only covering up his disgraceful decision with hypocritical double-talk.
