India plays safe; slams Hamas but for Palestine state

Four days after the attacks by Hamas against Israel sparked a war in the region, India’s response came in two tweets from Prime Minister Narendra Modi that condemned terrorism in any form and expressed solidarity with Israel.

New Delhi has friendly ties with both Israel and the Palestinian side, so it is expected to be cautious in its public messaging. But its relationship with Israel has grown rapidly in recent years as compared to that with Palestine.

The Israel-Hamas war may draw the two countries even closer. It may be pertinent to remember that during its first few decades of independence, India enjoyed close relations with the Palestinians.

Relations with Israel only began to strengthen after the cold war. A watershed moment came in 1999, when Israel sent weapons to India during the latter’s brief war with Pakistan.

But Indo-Israel ties have blossomed in the Modi era. In 2017, Modi became the first Indian PM to visit Israel. Since then, trade and arms sales have surged. Technological cooperation especially in agriculture and surveillance (a-la Pegasus and many more) has expanded, too.

Ostensibly, the similarly tough approaches that Modi and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu take toward counterterrorism, along with their reported gelling, have strengthened relations.

That terrorism triggered the Israel-Hamas war could generate a strong sense of solidarity between Israel and India, which has also suffered terrorist attacks and confronts the persistent threat of terrorism till date.

Recent geopolitical developments in the Middle East have bolstered the partnership while increasing the distance between India and Palestine.

New Delhi embraced the 2020 Abraham Accords, which normalized Israel’s relations with some of its Arab neighbours and enabled the emergence of new initiatives such as theI2U2 Quad(unofficially also termed as the “Indo-Abrahamic construct), and a new transport corridor that include India.

Multilateral cooperation in the Middle East is important for New Delhi, given its trade interests there and the large Indian diaspora in the Arab Gulf. Recently, the International Federation of Indo-Israel Chamber of Commerce (IFIICC) was established in Dubai.

India’s relations in the Middle East also align more closely with Israel’s interests than the Palestinians’. Some of India’s top partners in the region such as Egypt and the United Arab Emirates have formal relations with Israel, while Saudi Arabia was reportedly closing in on a normalization deal before the IsraelHamas war began.

Iran, a Hamas ally, is one of the few Middle Eastern states that have bumps in its relations with India, mainly because New Delhi has reduced its commercial ties with Tehran in deference to U.S. sanctions.

Despite all this, India can’t afford to give the impression that it’s fully taking Israel’s side. India won’t want to antagonize key partners in the Middle East that are appalled by Israel’s retaliation in Gaza.

India will likely keep a low profile during the war, privately signalling its support to Israel but communicating to Palestinian interlocutors that its expressions of solidarity with Israel are a reaction to Hamas terrorism and not rejection of the Palestinian cause.

Understandably there is reported unhappiness among India’s Arab partners about New Delhi’s refusal to mention Israel’s retaliatory operations in Gaza. An Indian statement calling for de-escalation and dialogue can’t be ruled out in near future.

Expanding India-Israel cooperation and a new war suggest that India’s long-standing policy of balancing relations with Israel and the Palestinians could become a tight rope walk.