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Narendra Modi is set to become the first Indian prime minister to visit Israel when he flies to the West Asian nation this year. Even as the exact dates and itinerary are being worked out, Business Standard traces the diplomatic history between the two nations.
The early years
- India recognised Israel on September 18, 1950. But because of India’s non-aligned stance, and its close ties with the erstwhile USSR, it maintained a cold outlook towards the nation which had clearly declared its loyalty to the US. India also seemed to be suspicious about Israel’s relations with its neighbours China and Sri Lanka. The Congress Party’s overarching presence at the centre and state levels meant a national consensus on supporting the Palestinians and opposition to Israel, with the foreign policy being uniformly pro-Arab
- Yet these were not entirely fallow years in terms of contact between India and Israel.
- India reportedly purchased arms and ammunition from Israel both after the Sino-Indian War of 1962 and the India-Pakistan Wars of 1965 and 1971. Israel was ready to sell the needed weapons thanks to embargoes in the UK, US and France. Similarly, a relationship between India’s security agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and Israel's spy agency Mossad has existed since the 1960s
- Even on the non-defence and security front, the situation was not entirely negative. India maintained contacts to understand Israeli techniques of dry land farming and drip irrigation. Along with a few direct and indirect contacts with Israel, mainly in the field of technology, in the late 1980s, the greatest success has been in the diamond industry which today accounts for 50 per cent of India-Israel non-defence trade.
- In terms of diplomatic contact, a few high level, yet largely fruitless, contacts took place between the two nations, including the visit of then Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett (1956) in the middle of the Suez crisis; Ruth Dayan, wife of then Defence Minister Moshe Dayan (1968) and then Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan (1977).
The post-Cold War era
- With the end of the Cold war, and shift in India’s foreign and economic policy, diplomatic ties between India and Israel were formally established by the Narasimha Rao government in 1992, when Israel opened an embassy in New Delhi in February, and India reciprocated in May with an embassy in Tel Aviv.
- In 1996, India acquired from Israel, 32 IAI Searcher unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), Electronic Support Measure sensors and an air combat manoeuvring instrumentation simulator system. From then on, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) has worked on several large contracts with the Indian Air Force, including upgrading MiG-21 ground attack aircraft.
- Then Israeli President Ezer Weizman led a 24-member business delegation to India in December 1997, the first Israeli head of state head to the nation. Weizman met with then President Shankar Dayal Sharma, Vice-President K R Narayanan and Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda, and also went on to finalise a weapons deal involving the purchase of the Barak-1 vertically-launched surface-to-air missiles
- In 2000, Jaswant Singh became the first Indian foreign minister to visit the West Asian nation, following which a joint anti-terror commission was set up by two countries
- Ariel Sharon became the first Israeli PM to visit India in 2003, during which a series of cooperative agreements in various fields including health, education and drug trafficking were signed
- No major high-level visits have occurred since then, from either side
- BBC reported trade between the two countries had risen from $200 million in 1992 to about $4.39 billion in 2013
- In 2013, India was Israel's 10th largest trade partner overall and its third largest trade partner in Asia after China and Hong Kong. Israel has also emerged as a major defence supplier to Delhi. Between Modi's election in May 2014 and November 2014, Israel exported $662 million worth of Israeli weapons and defence items to India. This export number is greater than the total Israeli exports to India during the previous three years combined.
