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Friday February 29, 2008

Ties with Israel put India on the defensive

by jeremy kahn
jta

new delhi | India’s growing defense ties to Israel are prompting a negative backlash among some of India’s political leaders.

Though India and Israel only established diplomatic relations in 1992, their relationship has blossomed over the past 15 years, particularly with defense. India has become the Israeli defense industry’s top foreign customer, with some $1.5 billion in annual purchases, and Israel is now India’s second most important weapons supplier after Russia.

With India planning to spend an additional $40 billion over the next decade to modernize its armed forces, which until now have relied primarily on antiquated equipment originally purchased from the Soviet Union, Israeli companies are poised to capture even more business.

That was quite evident at last week’s Defense Expo, a large defense industry trade show in New Delhi. Israeli companies were eager to show off their hi-tech products — everything from missiles to advanced night-vision equipment to unpiloted aerial drones — but reticent to talk about what they currently are supplying to the Indian armed forces.

India’s growing dependence on Israeli-made military technology has caused consternation among India’s left-wing politicians and intellectuals, who fear their country is abandoning its support for the Palestinian cause and jeopardizing its ties with Arab states — in particular Iran, upon which India is increasingly dependent to meet its surging energy needs.

“It is a matter of serious concern that India and Israel are deepening their military relationship,” said D. Raja, general secretary of the Communist Party of India. “We hold [Israel] responsible for crimes perpetrated on the people of Palestine.”

Opposition to closer India-Israel defense ties is strongest in India’s Left Front, a group of four political parties — including the Communists — that provides critical support to the ruling United Progressive Alliance, a coalition government led by the Congress Party.

The leftist parties are especially upset over India’s launch last month of an Israeli TecSar satellite, widely described in both the Israeli and Indian media as a spy satellite that Israel would use to gather intelligence on Iran.

India’s Space Research Organization has an agreement to launch two more such satellites for Israel. In return, Israel has agreed to share certain images from the satellites with India, according to a report in the Times of India.

The leftist parties noted that the TecSar launch coincided with Israel’s ongoing blockade of the Gaza Strip and several Israeli raids into the Hamas-ruled area.

“The UPA government is keeping a shameful silence on this criminal blockade by Israel,” the Communist Party of India said in a statement released immediately after the launch. “It is instead collaborating with Israel to enhance its military capability.”

The statement accused Israel of being “responsible for state terrorism, violence and aggression.”

Many Indian political analysts describe such statements as bluster.

“I think they are just making noises,” said S. Samuel C. Rajiv, a researcher at the Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses, a think tank in New Delhi. “I don’t think they have the ability to stop [the India-Israel defense] relationship from going forward or to prevent these deals from getting done.”

But opposition to closer defense ties to Israel has resonance in a country with the second largest Muslim population in the world after Indonesia, and which had been hostile to Israel for much of its history.

Shahid Saddiqui, a minister of parliament in India’s upper house for the opposition Samajwadi Party, which draws support among Muslims and lower-caste Hindus, said his constituents do not favor strong Indian-Israeli defense relations.

“Indian Muslims are not against ties with Israel,” he said. “But Indian Muslims are not for military alliances with Israel.

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