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ISRAEL has been in the news in the context of the prime
minister’s visit and I may be forgiven for a touch of nostalgia. I was the
first Indian journalist to visit Israel after an Australian fanatic had set
fire to the pulpit of the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem in August 1969. The Arab
World was ablaze.
Indian passports in those days were not valid for South
Africa, Israel and Southern Rhodesia. Under a special dispensation you could
obtain a separate passport for travel to countries with which India did not
have diplomatic ties. Israelis were more practical: they pinned a piece of
paper for entry and exit which could be pulled out when travelling to other
countries.
The reception I received at Ben Gurion airport was the stuff
of fairy tales for a reporter in his 20s. Never will Jerusalem municipality
have a public relations officer more beautiful than Bathsheba Herman.
Something that had not touched the Israelis then was
arrogance. They came across as clever, wise, modest people, working diligently
on their Kibbutz, the typically Jewish cooperatives, where inequalities were
not discernible. It was possible to contemplate Fa Giladi, the exquisite
Kibbutz in the shadow of Mt Hermon, as the dream location for research on the
Palestinian issue.
The simplicity of the people helped tone down shades of
Zionism instilled in us and which was the bane of the Palestinian people.
Ambassadors like John Kenneth Galbraith held Pandit Nehru in their thrall with
their intellect. But during the Indira Gandhi years, changes were creeping
across the diplomatic corps. There were various ways to gauge how well informed
an ambassador was. A simple test could be this: was the ambassador a regular
fixture at the new year eve party hosted by Indira Gandhi’s leftist adviser,
editor of Seminar, Romesh Thapar. By this and several other criteria the trophy
belonged to Clovis Maksoud, Arab League’s first ambassador, articulate, even
bombastic, with an unerring eye for New Delhi’s well groomed ladies. His role
in sensitising the New Delhi elite to the intricacies of the Palestinian case
must never be underestimated.
Nehru as leader of the Non-Aligned and Afro-Asian bloc
obviously had a large constituency among left liberals and Muslims. His charm
offensive even on the Arabs worked such magic that Raees Amrohvi, an Urdu poet
from Pakistan, was moved to write a quatrain:
‘Jup raha hai aaj mala ek Hindu ki Arab
Barhman zaa de mein shaane dilbari aisi to ho!
Hikmat e Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru ki qasam
Mar mitey Islam jispar, kafiri aisi to ho!’
(What a spell this Brahmin has cast on the Arabs
Who now chant his name on their beads.
Look at the magic of this kafir (non-believer);
Believers of the Arab world lie at his feet)
Until 1990s, it was anti intellectual to cast positive light
on the Israeli case. When Rajiv Gandhi became prime minister in 1984, he was
advised by Muslim congressmen in his vicinity (but totally out touch with the
community) not to upgrade relations with Israel because that would adversely
affect the party’s Muslim support.
When I argued against this line in the Indian Express, Rajiv
had it expanded into an official note. Muslim leaders, such as they were, and
the Mullah had shackled the community with issues like Shah Bano, Salman
Rushdie, Babri Masjid, Muslim character of Aligarh Muslim University and now
relations with Israel. What any backward community needed was employment,
education, entrepreneurial help, I wrote.
After Rajiv was assassinated half way through the 1991
general elections PV Narasimha Rao upgraded relations with Israel in 1992.
There was not a whimper from the community.
Initially, relations were more or less mechanically
upgraded. Absence of any real content in the relationship invited Shimon Peres
to quip in an interview with me:
‘Indo-Israeli relations are like French perfume — to be
smelt not drunk.’
The Israel Bathsheba Harman introduced me to soon after the
1967 war, had hardened by the 1993 Oslo accords. But even so one could salve
one’s conscience with the thought that Oslo would at least lead to a two-state
solution.An episode firmed up my appraisal of the Israeli-Palestinian
two-state process.
It was a Shabath lunch, at a friend’s house in Herzilia.
Among this very small group happened to a person at one end of the lawn,
wreathed in cigarette smoke, a glass of red wine in one hand, rapidly
replenished, obviously revelling in the company of three well groomed ladies
who had formed an admiring circle around him. It was prime minister Yitzhak
Rabin, lighting one Kent after another, like Belmondo in a Godard film.
He came across at first a shy man but once he opened up, he
was transparent and obviously trustworthy. His approach to Oslo was not at a
variance from another loveable Israeli, Yossi Beilin, very much the author of
the Oslo accords.
Obsession with survival and security had injected some iron
in the Israeli soul, but the Jewish state became hard as nails after the 9/11
wars, Islamophobia, and Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister who visited
India on the first anniversary of 9/11, just when the war-on-terror rhetoric
was being amplified here too.
Sensitive defence deals with Israel begun under Atal Behari
Vajpayee were boosted by Manmohan Singh. The Palestinian issue, which was
highest priority up to Indira Gandhi, dipped in saliency.
Prime minister Narendra Modi’s visit, however, is fired by
an atavistic Hindutva adoration for a small country on top of its mischievous
Muslim neighbours. Ramallah has been bypassed, of course. But it should not be
lost on the insiders that during the September non aligned summit in Venezuela
the Indian delegation received instructions from South block, to drop the
routine reference to the Palestinian issue altogether. It was a tradition from
the earliest days of NAM.
No, Ramallah was not just bypassed; Palestine has been
downgraded to the level of irrelevance.
Source: www.newagebd.net
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