CORRECTED-Under Modi, Israel and India forge deeper business ties

AVERAGE INDIAN

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By Tova Cohen and Ari Rabinovitch

TEL AVIV, Nov 19 (Reuters) - At the UN General Assembly in New York last September, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu set aside time for a critical meeting. But it wasn't President Barack Obama he was keen to see. It was Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Since Modi came to power in May, ties between Israel and India have been in overdrive, with the two signing a series of defence and technology deals that have underscored their burgeoning commercial and political relationship.

The same month as the UN meeting, Modi's cabinet cleared a long-delayed purchase of Israeli missiles for its navy. In October, India closed a $520 million deal to buy Israeli anti-tank missiles. And last week, a jointly developed aerial defence system passed a major trial, which India called a "milestone".

"There is great momentum in cooperation, on both the defence and economic sides," Naftali Bennett, Israel's economy minister and a member of Netanyahu's inner cabinet, told Reuters.

India is now the largest buyer of Israeli military equipment, while Israel is India's largest customer after Russia. In the first nine months of 2014, bilateral trade reached $3.4 billion, on target for a record this year.

While that may not be vast in global terms, it has helped push Asia to the brink of overtaking the United States as Israel's largest export market after the European Union.

India is steadily catching up with China as it buys more Israeli defence and cyber-security technology, an area where China is limited since the United States frowns on Israel dealing too freely with Beijing in defence matters.

The roots of the Israel relationship go back to 2006, when Modi was chief minister of Gujarat and visited the region to explore new ideas in irrigation, an area of Israeli expertise.

As a result, India started buying drip-feed technology, said Amnon Ofen, a friend of Modi's and chairman of NaanDanJain Irrigation, formed after India's Jain Irrigation acquired a firm created by two Israeli collective farms.

Under Modi's predecessor, Manmohan Singh, India kept its relationship with Israel under wraps, in part so as not to upset its Muslim minority, said C. Raja Mohan, head of strategic studies at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi.

"Cynics in Israel would point out that Delhi was treating Tel Aviv like a mistress - engage in private but refuse to be seen with in public," said Mohan. "The Modi government is having none of that."

The question is where the relationship goes from here. Strategically, Israel is glad to have a rising Asian power as an ally. But for both the focus is really on business.

Israel Ports Co. is partnering India's Cargo Motors to build a deepwater port in Gujarat, and Israel's TowerJazz is teaming up with India's Jaiprakash Associates and IBM with plans to build a $5.6 billion chip plant near Delhi.

At a security conference in Tel Aviv last week, executives from top Indian firms were shopping for systems to secure their pipelines, refineries and other infrastructure.

All the activity has lead to expectations that Israel and India will finalise a free trade agreement in the next year.

"That means trade will double or triple," said Anat Bernstein-Reich, who chairs the Israel-India Chamber of Commerce, an office hoping and preparing for a boom. (Additional reporting by Sanjeev Miglani in New Delhi; editing by Luke Baker and Janet McBride)

CORRECTED-Under Modi, Israel and India forge deeper business ties | Reuters
 

sorcerer

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Why India Is Getting Serious About Its Relationship With Israel
In recent days, India has reached out to its Middle Eastern partners in a major way. Last week, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj went to Bahrain to attend the first ministerial meeting of the India-Arab League Cooperation Forum. This was an opportunity to engage with the 22 member countries of the Arab League at a time when the region is going through a major crisis and sectarian divisions are rearing their heads like never before.

Further cementing the goodwill generated by the visit of Indian President Pranab Mukherjee to Israel and Palestine some three months ago, Swaraj also visited Israel and Palestine. Her visit has paved the way for a possible visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to India later this year and it is also likely that Prime Minister Narendra Modi may pay a return visit to Tel Aviv.

A hallmark of the Modi government’s foreign policy has been a self-confident assertion of Indian interests. This is reflected in his government’s moves vis-à-vis Israel, marking a distinct break from the unnecessary and counterproductive diffidence of the past. Despite sharing 24 years of diplomatic ties and working closely on defense, counterterrorism, agriculture, and energy-related issues, no Indian prime minister or president had visited Israel until Mukherjee’s visit last year.

There has been a steady strengthening of India’s relationship with Israel ever since the two established full diplomatic relations in 1992. It is a tribute to Prime Minister Narasimha Rao’s foresight that he was able to lay the foundation of the Indo-Israeli partnership. In contrast to the back-channel security ties that existed before the normalization of bilateral relations, India has been more willing in recent years to carve out a mutually beneficial bilateral relationship with Israel, including deepening military ties and liaising on countering the threat terrorism poses to the two societies.

Over the years, the Indian government has toned down its reactions to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. India has also begun denouncing Palestinian suicide bombings and other terrorist acts in Israel, something that was seen earlier as rather justified in light of the Israeli policies against the Palestinians. India is no longer initiating anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations and has made serious attempts to moderate the Non-Aligned Movement’s (NAM) anti-Israel resolutions. This re-evaluation has been based on a realization that India’s largely pro-Arab stance in the Middle East has not been adequately reciprocated and rewarded by the Arab world.

India has received no worthwhile backing from Arab countries in the resolution of problems it faces in its neighborhood, especially Kashmir. There have been no serious attempts by the Arab world to put pressure on Pakistan to reign in the cross-border insurgency in Kashmir. On the contrary, Arab nations have firmly stood by Pakistan, using the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to build support for Islamabad and jihadi groups in Kashmir. If Arab nations, such as Jordan, have been able to keep their traditional ties with Palestine intact while building a new relationship with Israel, there is no reason for India not to take a similar route, which might give it more room for diplomatic maneuvering in the region.

In fact, it was recently revealed that since the beginning of 2014, representatives from Israel and Saudi Arabia have had five secret meetings to discuss a common foe, Iran. Though Saudi Arabia still doesn’t recognize Israel’s right to exist and Israel has yet to accept a Saudi-initiated peace offer to create a Palestinian state, this has not prevented the two from working together to thwart a strategic threat that they both feel strongly about.

Keeping India’s wider strategic interests in perspective, successive Indian governments since the early 1990s have walked a nuanced line between expressing genuine concern for the Palestinian cause and expanding its commercial and defense ties with Israel. India is the world’s largest buyer of Israeli weaponry and was Israel’s third largest trading partner in Asia, just after China and Hong Kong.

Israel has been a good friend to India, but New Delhi continues to be shy of demonstrating its friendship. At crucial times, when India needed Israeli help, it got it unreservedly. Israel was willing to continue and even step up its arms sales to India after other major states curbed their technological exports following India’s May 1998 nuclear tests. Israel provided India with much-needed imagery about Pakistani positions using its UAVs during the Kargil War with Pakistan in 1999. That was ultimately instrumental in turning the war around for India. When India was planning to undertake a limited military strike against Pakistan in June 2002 as part of “Operation Parakram,” Israel supplied hardware through special planes. The terrorism that both India and Israel face comes not only from disaffected groups within their territories; it is also aided and abetted by neighboring states, increasingly capable of transferring weapons of mass destruction to terrorist organizations.

And yet previous governments had been reticent in acknowledging Israel’s partnership. In diplomacy, public affirmation of friendships at the highest levels is often as important as drawing red-lines for adversaries. The Modi government is doing well by repudiating the discredited Israel policy of its predecessors. An open relationship with Israel serves India well and it’s about time Tel Aviv gets the recognition it deserves from New Delhi. Sushma Swaraj’s visit has made it clear that even as India will try to balance its commitments vis-à-vis Israel and Palestine, New Delhi and Tel Aviv will continue to work toward forging a more robust partnership that spans across various sectors and is not one-dimensional.

http://thediplomat.com/2016/01/why-india-is-getting-serious-about-its-relationship-with-israel/
 

Kshatriya87

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And its going down again. Incredible India wants Israel to end the occupation of Palestine. Stupid Indians. :frusty:
 

guru-dutt

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And its going down again. Incredible India wants Israel to end the occupation of Palestine. Stupid Indians. :frusty:
that my friend is looking like a paid media presstitute work to sabotage anything worthwhile going for this government
 

guru-dutt

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It came up in defencenews.in.
.....................................
it says "want" question is "who wants" to sabotage indo israeli relations as among all things palestine issue is very close to israeli national physique its a mischief by leftist and khangressies
 

Kshatriya87

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it says "want" question is "who wants" to sabotage indo israeli relations as among all things palestine issue is very close to israeli national physique its a mischief by leftist and khangressies
Exactly. Why would they try to build relations on one day and screw them up the next.

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guru-dutt

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Exactly. Why would they try to build relations on one day and screw them up the next.

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nothing gonna happen and both israeli and indian goverment know very well about such trouble makers and have already sepparate "programme" for them
 

Kshatriya87

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nothing gonna happen and both israeli and indian goverment know very well about such trouble makers and have already sepparate "programme" for them
What programme?

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Kshatriya87

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bhai ji im a simple man i dont use android phones and all this watsapp and taptalak or wiber even my kids make fun of me for that :crying:
Are? Maine kidhar phone ke bare me bola. Main toh programme puch raha hu

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Nobody should notice Modi's visit to Israel except probably jholas in this country . With so much green on green action going on in middle east and so many Abduls dying Israel is hardly the villain currently .
 

Nuvneet Kundu

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And its going down again. Incredible India wants Israel to end the occupation of Palestine. Stupid Indians. :frusty:
This is done with great forethought, not out of some Nehruvian idea of a hipster worldview. Modi was scheduled to visit Israel, making him the first Indian PM, then suddenly they downgraded the level of diplomatic engagement from PM to MEA, now Sushma Swaraj is going. I think this change was a result of some hard thinking by the security council. It is in our interest that Israel remain under some kind of existential threat from other nations for India to retain an elevated position of importance in the eyes of Israel. An Israel that is under no pressure has no obligation to play nice with India, and they might as well start blackmailing us with threats of selling weapons technology to Pakistan, like Russia and France does. The fact that Israel remains under siege impedes them from taking any measures that might alienate India. This status quo favors us.

Israel needs India because the threat of India keeps Pakistan from forging any meaningful military alliance with Israel's enemy Turkey. It is this threat that makes Israel less likely to double cross us. If the threat from Turkey didn't exist, Israel would be blackmailing us right now. It is in our interest that the Palestine conflict keeps boiling with no resolution in sight. We engage both sides (Israel and OPEC) in a competitive bidding to stay in the good books of India since India is a big strategic buyer for both of them. We maintain an ambiguous stance on Palestine so that both Israel and OPEC keep offering us their respective strategic resources (weapons and oil) at competitive rates in exchange for our diplomatic support for their respective causes in the international forums. If the Palestine conflict is solved, then Israel has nothing to stop it from playing a wider global role and there is a fear that they might start playing the same game that the US plays with us vis-a-vis weapons sales to Pakistan.

An Israel under siege is good for India.
 
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