Right-wing rhetoric undermining India’s discourse on Palestine

The descent into indignity and divisiveness in speeches and on virtual platforms witnessed during the long Lok Sabha election campaign has seeped into diplomacy as well. Here is an example of what I received from a retired Indian diplomat at the beginning of last month through an instant messaging service.

“Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has done humanity a favour by crushing Islamists and Jihadis. It serves Muslims right,” he wrote. I later found out that he had sent the same message to several friends and acquaintances. Despite spewing religious venom, he was gracious to add that “one feels sorry for the collateral damage though.” All compassion had not ebbed from his heart, maybe some residue of his diplomatic training and practice remains even in retirement. His message went on. “Can you imagine that a Muslim lady anchor (sic!) on BBC said on air to white people that ‘if you don’t like Muslims in Britain, then you can always leave.’ If Trump comes back (to the White House), he too would check these people in the United States.” The anchor reference was to Bushra Shaikh, a British-Pakistani who first came into the limelight on BBC One’s The Apprentice seven years ago.

Right-wing hate speech, combined with crass ignorance, is robbing India’s policy discourse on the Israel-Palestine issue of logic, reason and, most of all, an accurate understanding. Contrary to what the former Indian diplomat wrote in his message, Netanyahu will be remembered by future generations of Palestinians as the singular Jew who facilitated the ultimate creation of a Palestinian state. A two-state solution in the fratricidal West Asia region, which appeared to be a fading dream for all Arabs even a year ago, has been made inevitable by Netanyahu’s policies since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7. It is a reasonable prediction that Netanyahu, although 74, may see in his lifetime two states on the land he considers indivisible. In spite of himself, or, to be more accurate, because of him. Ironically, such an assessment has been enhanced by, of all persons, Netanyahu’s own Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. Few Israelis can match Smotrich in their hatred of Palestinians. He was, however, recently forced to admit at a meeting of Jewish local councils on the West Bank that “the danger of a Palestinian state becoming a reality is more tangible than it has been for years.”

In recent weeks, several Indian pundits have expressed genuine surprise in print and electronic media that students in the US should have overwhelmingly worked themselves up against investments by their alma maters in companies with Israeli links and those which profit from the Netanyahu government’s aggression against all Gazans. They cannot comprehend how or why Joe Biden’s re-election as US President is now at risk because of anger among voters in some of America’s swing states over Biden’s all-out support for Israel in the ongoing violence. On February 1, Biden, seeking to balance such support, issued a presidential order which brings within the scope of US punishments those Jewish settlers who commit violence against West Bank Palestinians. Apologists in India for Netanyahu’s policies — for anything he does — were shocked into disbelief by this executive order. On March 14, when the Biden administration imposed sanctions on two entire Israeli outposts on the West Bank, some Indian pundits went so far as to criticise the White House. It was as if India itself was being sanctioned by the US.

Largely unnoticed in India, but critically more important than US sanctions and visa bans against errant Jewish settlers on Palestinian land, has been a break by Biden from Trump’s policy on such settlements. On February 23, Biden authorised his Secretary of State Antony Blinken to unequivocally assert that any new Jewish settlements are “inconsistent with international law”. Blinken chose Buenos Aires to make the announcement. It was a pointed signal to right wing governments, such as in Argentina, that the US was cancelling its blank cheque to the incumbent Israeli government, which it issued after the Hamas onslaught last year. In November 2019, Trump changed a long-standing US stand that Jewish settlements on Palestinian land captured by Tel Aviv’s military during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war was inconsistent with international law. On January 8, 2020, while the Trump administration was having its last gasps before a reluctant handover of the White House to the incoming President, the then US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, rubbished the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 and several United Nations Security Council resolutions relevant to this issue. These UN measures universally prohibited the settlement of another country’s civilians — in this case, Israel — on any land under occupation. Israel has placed nearly 4,40,000 of its Jewish citizens among Palestinians who live on the occupied West Bank. Biden’s break with Trump’s travesty of global norms and opinion was a long-awaited consequence of the policies of Netanyahu’s extreme conservative government. The restored US stand is consistent with India’s long-held position, which has not been altered by the Narendra Modi government.

More and more European countries are extending diplomatic recognition to the Palestinian state. Slovenia is the latest. It did so on May 29, Prime Minister Robert Golob announced. The previous day, Spain, Ireland and Norway extended such recognition. Among the 27 members of the European Union, Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Sweden have diplomatic relations with the State of Palestine. Malta is considering such a step. There will be a diplomatic earthquake if the UK recognises Palestine after its July 4 elections. Australia has said it is considering diplomatic ties as well.

In 1974, India became the first non-Arab nation to recognise the Palestine Liberation Organisation as the sole and legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. Yet, when reporters quizzed the Ministry of External Affairs last week on these developments, its spokesperson was hesitant about the history of Indian recognition. “India recognised Palestine way back in the 1980s,” he vaguely said. There is no reason for such hesitancy about India’s relations with Palestine. Modi is the first Indian Prime Minister to have visited Palestine. Ditto the President’s visit to Palestine a year after Modi came to power. India’s relations with Israel ought not to be a zero-sum game.