India-Israel Cooperation: Krishna’s Visit to Tel Aviv

India and Israel have vowed to upgrade their relations in all fields amid the emphasis by External Affairs Minister SM Krishna on working out a joint strategy to "checkmate" the scourge of terrorism affecting both the countries. Krishna’s visit to Israel assumes significance because the last such trip took place in July 2000 when the then External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh traveled here.
The two countries signed an Extradition Treaty and a pact on Transfer of Sentenced Prisoners as Krishna wound up his two-day visit here, first by an Indian Foreign Minister in over a decade.
During his stay, Krishna met the top leadership including President Simon Peres and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu besides holding elaborate talks with his counterpart Avigdor Lieberman.
Landmark Visit
Krishna’s visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories earlier this week was a landmark one. In this India displayed, for the first time, open even-handedness, compromising neither its core interests nor core beliefs. In Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, the external affairs minister candidly laid down the significance of India-Israel relations, speaking without hesitation of the reasons why cooperation with Israel was necessary. He stressed agriculture: this country has in recent years counted on Israeli aid in technologies and techniques relating to dryland farming. But mention must be made of the defense equipment and technologies that we get from Israel, which are vitally needed on our borders. The unmanned aerial vehicles and night-fighting equipment of Israeli make have vastly improved India’s management of the border regions with Pakistan and enhanced our capabilities to neutralize infiltration by terrorist groups. It was, therefore, natural for Krishna to mention anti-terrorism cooperation. In recent years, Israel has emerged as a significant source of military hardware alongside Russia and some Western countries.
Tel Aviv’s Support for New Delhi’s UN Seat
Krishna was received with warmth in Ramallah, headquarters of the Palestinian Authority, after his talks in the Israeli capital, indicating the importance the Palestinians attach to India’s unflinching political support for their cause of “an independent, sovereign and viable Palestinian state”, to quote from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s speech at the UN General Assembly in September, where India made a strong pitch for granting Palestine UN membership in the face of opposition from the United States and its Western allies.

Friendship with both Israel and the Palestinians is not a zero-sum game — one cannot be at the cost of the other, although certain constituencies here continue to adopt such a shortsighted approach. This was underlined without blushing during Krishna’s recent sojourn. If it is important for various reasons to do business with Israel, it is no less necessary to uphold the principle of Palestinian rights and make efforts to give it practical shape.

Israel's Challenge to US Calls To Halt Settlement Activity

The US envoy to the Arab region, Senator George Mitchell, begins a new tour during which he meets with Arab and Israeli officials under the theme of "advancing the peace process and looking for ways to overcome the obstacles that stand in its way."

US-Israeli Tension
This tour is different from the previous ones as it comes amid US-Israeli tension because of Benjamin Netanyahu's defiance of the US Administration's calls to freeze the settlement activity and dismantle the illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Netanyahu refused to present any commitment to freezing the settlement Activity during his recent visit to the White House. His aides bragged about this stand and considered it a sign of strength and firmness. This stand prompted his foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, to "reprimand" Senator Mitchell and lecture him on how what he termed Israeli concessions through a withdrawal from the Gaza Strip led to an increase in the rocket attacks on Israeli towns and settlements in the south.
Nothing has changed since Mitchell's last tour about one and a half months ago. The Israeli settlements are expanding on the pretext of natural growth and Lieberman continues to hold his post as Foreign Minister, while Netanyahu gave the Israelis a free hand to settle unconditionally in occupied East Jerusalem. Furthermore, his government issued decisions to confiscate Palestinian lands in occupied Jerusalem and build 50 housing units in the Shaykh Jarrah Neighborhood of Jerusalem.
We do not know how Senator Mitchell and his administration will deal with this Israeli challenge. Until now, this administration has been contented with expressing its "resentment" of and "opposition" to the settlement activity without taking any practical punitive steps.

Paying Price for Verbal Opposition
What we fear most is that this administration might ask the Arabs to immediately pay a price for its verbal opposition to the settlement activity by taking normalization steps with Israel, such as opening their airspace to Israeli flights, activating the trade exchange, and opening trade offices in occupied Jerusalem.
The US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that the Arabs' presentation of a peace initiative alone is not enough. She added that normalization steps must be taken to explain this initiative and reassure the Israeli public opinion and Government by showing how serious the Arabs are toward peace.
The first and most prominent response to Ms Clinton's call came from the heir apparent of Bahrain, Shaykh Salman Bin-Hamad Al Khalifah. He wrote an article in the US Newspaper the Washington Post in which he called on the Arabs to move toward the Israelis through the Israeli media to facilitate the peace efforts between the Arabs and Israelis. He said: "We, the Arabs, have not done enough to directly communicate with the Israeli people."
The US State Department immediately welcomed the Bahraini heir apparent's article and asked Senator Mitchell to go to Manama to congratulate him on his stand and to convey the US Administration's thanks to him and to his government.

US Stand Towards Arab-Israeli Conflict
There is no argument over the fact that the current US Administration's stand towards the Arab-Israeli conflict is totally different from that of the former administration that was led by George Bush and the group of the neo conservatives.
However, as Arabs and particularly as Palestinians, we must not pay the price for this difference in advance by reversing the Arab peace initiative in order for us to begin full normalization before a complete withdrawal.