A role for India in the Israel-Palestine conflict?
A role for India in the Israel-Palestine conflict?
WRITTEN BY ARKOPRABHO HAZRA
2 May 2020
One important aspect of India–Arab relations has been a similarity of views on a number of political questions of global importance, notably New Delhi’s consistent position on the issue of Israel-Palestine conflict.
Contemporary India’s view of the Israeli–Palestinian question has old roots, starting from 1936 when India had observed Palestine Day on 27 September of that year. India’s current policy is in line with United Nations Security Council resolutions S/RES/242 (1967) and S/RES/338 (1973), the Quartet Roadmap and the Arab Peace Initiative of Saudi King Abdullah.
The start of 2018 saw high level diplomatic visits by India to the Middle East and to Israel in particular, which saw New Delhi raise the prospect of playing a role in solving the region’s oldest conflict. The fact that Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Palestine just a few weeks after his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu toured India demonstrates as to why rising powers like New Delhi can potentially play a major role in building peace between the two conflicting parties. The decision of the United States to move the US embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv in May 2018 damaged in the eyes of many the United State’s image as a credible and neutral arbiter in the Israel-Palestine conflict, which at this point seems to be irrecoverable. In contrast, rising powers like New Delhi are considered to be an acceptable mediator by a broad range of regional players.
India is capable in de-hyphenating the Israel-Palestine conflict, keeping in mind its historic relations with both the conflicting parties and the urgent need for a mediator, a gap that India can very well fill.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Palestine in February 2018 was termed “historic” and was said to be an important factor in the West Asian peace process by a key diplomatic official in Ramallah, indicating that India has a great role to play in the political process with the decline of the US role in mediation.
The latest development in this regard, took place in March this year, when a delegation of the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP), in their official statement said, “the delegation intends to engage India, a country with good relations to both the State of Palestine and Israel, in looking for ways how it could play a more proactive role in the settling of the question of Palestine”.
Due to India’s support of, a united, independent, viable, sovereign state of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital, living within recognized and secure borders side by side and at peace with Israel, it is understandable why various regional players and the UN is looking towards India as one of the likely countries who can take up the task of acting as a mediator between the two conflicting parties and bring about a change in the political scenario that has not witnessed peace in its true sense since the late 1940s.
In regard to this suggestion, there have been concerns raised about how asking Prime Minister Modi’s government to mediate the conflict shows lack of judgement by the UN, especially as we see how Muslims have been treated under the watch of Modi's administration, thus, concluding on a note that India’s Hindustic ideals would be favourable for Israel, hence if India mediates the conflict, it would be an unfair bargain from the Palestinian perspective.
Having understood this opinion and the reasoning behind it, we can clearly indicate that this perspective can come into the picture but in no way can we disregard that India is a viable option for mediation between the two conflicting parties, because if it wasn’t so, the Palestinian leader wouldn’t be looking forward to this with so much vigour.
India has definitely increased its security ties with Tel Aviv, but it has also simultaneously strengthened ties with the Palestinian Authority as well. Its friendly image enabled India to garner an invitation from Palestinian National Authority (PNA) leader Mahmoud Abbas to sit on a proposed multilateral forum for negotiations on a peace deal between Palestine and Israel, a role that India can take up.
It is evident that India is capable of de-hyphenating the Israel-Palestine conflict, keeping in mind its historic relations with both the conflicting parties and the urgent need for a mediator, a gap that India can very well fill.
When coming to the mediation process, the important thing to be noted is that any mediation cannot be carried out by only one party and thus needs the involvement of several actors. Keeping this in mind it is evident that India won’t act as a lone mediator in the peace process and instead be the facilitator of peace on a multilateral forum in the presence of other mediators.
At this current situation Abbas repeatedly calls for a possible role of India and others in the peace process which seems to be a viable recourse, with the escalating tension in the region, because all other avenues seem to not work out. Rising powers like New Delhi have less involvement in the region, and a neutral image which makes them fill the gap of a mediator. Trump’s Jerusalem move shows the status quo framework of the players in the region has drastically lost its credibility, thus giving rise to a more multipolar involvement in the conflict so as to see an unexplored path to peace for this high profile conflict.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author biography
Arkoprabho Hazra is currently working as a research intern at Observer Research Foundation (ORF) and is completing his Bachelors in Political Science. His research interests include the Middle East, primarily focusing on conflicts in the region and also Indian foreign policy. Image credit: Ministry of External Affairs/Flickr.