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India’s Jerusalem Misstep

22 Friday Dec 2017

Posted by in India, Israel, Middle East, Opinion and Response, South Asia

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In keeping with its historical tilt towards the Arabs, India voted in favour of the United Nations resolution that called on the United States to reverse its decision recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and consequently refrain from transferring its embassy from Tel Aviv to the city. Besides India, 127 countries voted in favour of the resolution, including the four permanent members of the UN Security Council, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran; 35 countries, including Canada and Mexico, abstained, and 21 countries were absent during the vote. Only seven countries stood by Israel and the United States to vote against the resolution. Just three days earlier, the Security Council had voted 14-1 against the US decision.

These resolutions are non-binding and meaningless in compelling the United States to accept international opinion. However, the voting indicates just how internationally isolated the Donald Trump administration has become over the US recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The landslide result came even as the United States had earlier threatened to curtail foreign aid to the countries that voted in favour of the resolution. Tellingly, the United States was abandoned by its staunchest long-term allies during the vote in the Security Council as well as the General Assembly. Even among the 28 NATO countries, no one voted with the United States and six abstained.

It is worth reiterating as many analysts not given to histrionics and I have in earlier articles that the US declaration is neither illegal nor does it change anything on the ground. First, the United States has left it to the Israelis and Palestinians to decide upon the boundaries of Jerusalem themselves, and second, the US embassy is being shifted to a neighbourhood in western Jerusalem – a portion of the city that has been the capital of Israel since December 13, 1949. It is only the status of East Jerusalem that is in dispute, but hypocritically only after 1967 when it came under Israeli possession and not 1948 when it was occupied by Jordan and Jews denied access to their holy sites.

This is not the place to get into the wrongs of India’s policy towards international Jewry in the 20th century before 1948 and Israel since. In any case, Delhi’s relations with Jerusalem have seen a sharp uptick since Narendra Modi took office in 2014 and India has been less reticent about its relations with Israel. Political rhetoric has been effusive about the “natural partnership” between the two states and highlighted cooperation particularly in critical areas such as defence, counter-terrorism, water management, and agriculture. India’s decision to vote with the UN resolution despite this bonhomie, though not surprising, is nevertheless unfortunate.

India had taken a noncommittal stance last fortnight when Trump first announced that the United States would recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The Ministry of External Affairs released a statement that Indian interests and policy would not be dictated by third parties. This position was reiterated a week later by India’s Minister of State for External Affairs, MJ Akbar, to the Arab League. It seems that Delhi finally buckled under the tremendous pressure from the Arab world to change its vote back to its traditional pattern.

It is not that India had no other options. Even if it did not wish to overtly side with Israel, it could have stayed true to its earlier stated position by abstaining from the vote or, better still, being absent for it. As Josef Broz Tito told Jawaharlal Nehru on the sidelines of the first Non-Aligned Movement summit in Belgrade in 1961, it is not necessary to take a position on every single issue that comes up. India’s warm words for Israel and its embassy in Tel Aviv would have allowed Delhi to straddle this divide masterfully but it was not to be.

One might argue that India’s vote is meaningless in terms of the global picture as well as in its bilateral relations with the United States and Israel. This is wishful thinking. While it is certainly true that India’s vote is meaningless in the broad scheme of things, it is more an indication of its weak diplomatic heft supported by a minor economy and even smaller military capability. To top it off, Delhi has no history of leadership in the Middle East. To conclude from this that India’s vote will not be noticed by Washington or Jerusalem, however, is folly.

The vote in a non-binding resolution may in and of itself be trivial but it fits a long and well-established pattern of voting against the United States and Israel. Yet another such vote indicates to both capitals that Delhi has not yet transformed into the rising world power they had hoped to see. India’s misstep at the United Nations might not attract an immediate and specific response but it will cool enthusiasm for greater trust and trade in sensitive technology and practices. Delhi’s signal that it remains the unreliable hedging power is no way to win friends and influence strategic partners, especially when India needs their help to fuel its economy and and military capabilities. India’s vote was important as that of a rising power but if, like China, it does not contribute to the existing world order, there is no reason for present powers to commit to its rise either.

It is ironic that India would like US and Israeli support on Kashmir but is not willing to even remain out of the fray – at no cost to it – on an equally emotive issue for them. Delhi seems to be sorely lacking in its understanding of diplomatic give-and-take, be it on the Indo-US civil nuclear cooperation agreement, trade agreements, joint military operations, or diplomatic undertakings. As the intractable hedge, Delhi reduces its own ability to influence states and leverage its assets for strategic gains.

This may be partly due to hubris among India’s leaders that their market is so large and increasingly prosperous that it is indispensable to salivating Western capitalists. The nuclear energy sector was a rude shock to such claptrap as company after Western company stayed away from the Indian market until the government finally stepped in to sufficiently assuage their concerns about India’s unconventional laws. Similarly, any sense of over-confidence India may have in its inherent worth would do well to get a reality check.

The usual argument trotted out to urge caution and status quo in India’s Middle East policy is that there are close to eight million Indians working in the Persian Gulf and they remit close to $35 billion annually to India. Yet if Delhi allows this to remain its primary criterion in deciding Middle East policy, it has effectively given the Gulf Cooperation Council a veto on its decision-making process. Additionally, these remittances are based on the Gulf economies and are hardly some sort of annual stipend for India. Delicate economic ties will not be snapped as easily as some analysts warn because the Gulf states also need an agreeable workforce; as a large customer, a minor diversification by India of its hydrocarbon acquisition can affect Gulf ledgers and is effective counter leverage.

There is no doubt that Washington’s threat that “it will take names” came across as crass and may have had an effect opposite to the one desired on many countries. With dwindling US aid and other financing options opening up, Trump was caught up in his own mini-1945 European Recovery Programme (ERP) time warp. For India, however, the threat need not have applied – its interests genuinely align significantly with those of Israel and the United States and there was no reason to stick a nay vote in their craw. The MEA’s failure to understand how international alliances work – however fluid and transient – is becoming one of India’s greatest liabilities.

The Rebirth of a Nation

29 Wednesday Nov 2017

Posted by in Israel, Middle East, Opinion and Response

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Panama…yes; Paraguay…yes; Peru…yes. As Philippines voted next in favour of the partition plan for Palestine, cheering broke out across the yishuv in the British mandate of Palestine. It was late in the evening as the news from Flushing Meadows crackled over radio sets in the Middle East. In essence, the British had announced their intention to abandon the Mandate and it was up to the locals to pick up the scraps of civilisation from the mess left behind. On November 29, 1947, United Nations Resolution 181 created legal ground for the formation of a Jewish state partitioned from the Arab domains of the region. The State of Israel had not been declared yet – that would have to wait until May 14, 1948 – or the 5th of Iyar if you want to get all Jewish about it – the day before the British mandate formally ended.

Seventy years hence, there is an air of inevitability around the story of the partition. Israel’s march from strength to strength makes the tense moments of its past seem like mere signposts to the present generation. However, the United Nations resolution came in the midst of tumult among even Zionist ranks, not all of whom were supportive of the partition plan. The Levant was a powder keg, something that would become customary over the decades. International opinion had been against the Jews and flipped at the last minute with some impressive Zionist diplomacy and an inexplicable Soviet change of heart. Although the United States has long been presented as Israel’s saviour at this crucial moment, the Soviet Union (and its four satellite nations) had a larger role to play than many realise.

In the immediate aftermath of the Jewish diplomatic victory in New York, riots broke out across Palestine. Angry Arab mobs attacked Jewish shops and residences to punish them for the partition plan and to dissuade them from further political audacity. The formal war would come later, the day after the declaration of the State of Israel, when the fledgling Jewish state’s six Arab neighbours would invade it. In the meantime, however, Jewish blood flowed in a frenzy of disorganised violence. In a single week in March 1948, over a 100 Jews were killed.

Zionist leaders had predicted such a reaction and had prepared themselves well. In their experience, the British government could not be trusted – in the past, they had stood by as Arabs massacred Jews and even intervened to disarm Jewish defence groups to place them at the mercy of the Arabs. In April 1947, the Haganah had little more than 10,000 rifles and less than 3,000 machine guns of poor quality and varying calibers; by independence, David Ben Gurion had almost tripled the Jewish arsenal and even added a couple of dozen Messerschmitts left over from World War II. In addition, a fund-raising drive by Golda Meir in the United States had garnered $50 million for the new Jewish state.

The plan to “save Israel” had been put into play since at least July 1945, when Ben Gurion met with 18 millionaires at the residence of his friend, Rudolph Sonnenborn, in New York. Under the guise of shipping medical equipment to hospitals, the Sonnenborn Institute would collect funds to purchase arms for the future Israeli military. Ben Gurion was fully aware that Washington’s feelings on Zionism were lukewarm at best and he was willing to evict the British, weakened by war, from Palestine by force if necessary. London, however, announced in February 1947 that it would leave Palestine by May 15 of the following year.

When war did break out six months after the passing of UN Resolution 181, the Western powers imposed a strict embargo against arms to the region. This seemingly fair step only helped the Arabs, who not only had established armies but also had British officers to consult with and train under. Israel had to use some clever tricks to procure arms: in one case, a sympathiser posed as a Hollywood producer interested in making a war film and smuggled all the props of his set to Israel. The bulk of the assistance came, as several of the founding generation attested, from the Soviet bloc. A vital purchase from Czechoslovakia, obviously approved by Moscow, saw Israel through the darkest days of its short existence.

The British Mandate of Palestine The separation of Jordan in April 1921 Israel, before and after the War of Independence

Diplomatically too, as Martin Kramer has recently written in Mosaic, the creation of Israel was forged largely through unexpected Soviet support. Zionist leaders such as Ben Gurion and Chaim Weizmann had long argued the Jewish case at the court of the Red tsar, particularly through the Soviet envoy to Britain, Ivan Maisky, but lack of sufficient access to Soviet archives has kept still kept a mystery the reason Stalin eventually allowed the vote to play out as it did. Despite their egalitarian dystopia, the Bolsheviks were only marginally less anti-Semitic than the prevailing currents in Europe. The vote, therefore, was a total surprise even to experienced Eastern Europe hands among the Zionists.

The United States’ role in the creation of Israel has been hyped beyond compare, Harry Truman even anointing himself a modern-day Cyrus, after the Persian emperor who liberated the Jews from Babylonian captivity, in a November 1953 speech to the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. Yet like the British Balfour Declaration, a seemingly pivotal moment in Jewish history tarnished by its context of the White Paper of 1922, the US vote in favour of the creation of Israel was followed by a declaration that partition was impossible to implement and the British mandate be temporarily passed on to the United Nations. Even on the eve of Israeli independence, US diplomats were still busy warning Zionist leaders to defer from statehood.

Besides the superpowers, the international community – perhaps with some transient shame for the Shoah – voted overwhelmingly in favour of the partition of Palestine into a Jewish state. Only Cuba, Greece, and India, along with Muslim countries, voted against partition. The final tally was 33 countries for the resolution, and 13 against, with 10 abstentions and one absence.

The military and political dimensions aside, Resolution 181 was not a completely kosher proposal even in its terms. The Arabs resented it for obvious reasons – they saw European Jews as usurpers of the land, if not a theologically inferior people – and there was no way the holy sites of the Scriptures could be surrendered to them. There was also some power play involved in the Arab position: Haj Amin al-Husseini aspired to build an independent Palestinian state out of the partition, while King Abdullah of Transjordan (Jordan attained its modern name in 1949) sought to annex the remains of Mandatory Palestine into the rest, which was his own kingdom. To this end, the king even negotiated in secret with Jewish representatives to foil Husseini’s bid for a separate state.

A not insignificant minority of Zionists were also unhappy with the partition plan. They argued that the mandate had already been partitioned once in April 1921 when Arab Jordan was created from 77 percent of the Mandatory domains; why should there be a further partition to deprive the Jews of even the little that was left? If the Arabs wanted a state out of the Mandate, they already had one in Jordan.

The Revisionist Zionists, led by Ze’ev Jabotinsky until his demise in 1942, had argued that Israel should extend across the river Jordan such that all the Biblical holy sites fell in the Holy Land. The Smol Ha’Yarden, a poem by Jabotinsky that later became one of Betar’s famous songs, encapsulated this ideal extent of Israel’s borders as that of the British Mandate. Several Zionists were unwilling to give up Judea and Samaria, what is today more commonly known as the West Bank, because it holds so many of their religious places.

This was not an uncommon view even among those who were more receptive to Resolution 181. Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, pleaded with his colleagues that they accept the UN resolution as it would constitute a formal international endorsement – for the first time – of the Jewish state. If the boundaries of the plan were not to their liking, he told them, they could later be redrawn. It was with careful thought, thus, that the boundaries of Israel were not announced in the declaration of independence. In fact, one of Ben Gurion’s biographers, Michael Bar Zohar, reveals that the prime minister clung to this notion even during the Suez Crisis of 1956, withdrawing Israeli forces from Sinai with great reluctance and only after repeated pressure from US president Dwight Eisenhower. The southern boundary was finally set, despite fierce domestic disapproval, only in 1979 during the Camp David accords between Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat.

Between the in-house Zionist squabbles, the Arab machinations, and the international warm-up to the Cold War, a narrow window of opportunity opened for a brief moment for the creation of Israel and was quickly shut. The political tumult of the past is obscured in the light of Israel’s military, economic, and political successes. Almost two thousand years after the last Jewish king – Herod Agrippa II –  had ruled, Israel would rise up again. And just as when it had fallen last, it had no allies but those it might be lent it for a fleeting moment by time and fate. Like Galba, Otho, and Vitellius; like Maisky, Andrei Gromyko, and, perhaps, Stalin.

Do We Need The United Nations?

26 Monday Oct 2015

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In May 1959, Dag Hammarskjöld asked the Students Association in Copenhagen, “Do we need the United Nations?” Ever since, we have been periodically returning to that question whenever the UN remains conspicuously absent during a crisis. With enough ongoing crises to merit a sequel to Billy Joel’s 1989 hit, We Didn’t Start The Fire – Syria, drugs, Libya, human trafficking, Yemen, terrorism, Boko Haram, climate change, Afghanistan, water, Kordofan, disease, Somalia, poverty, Balochistan, refugees, South Sudan, hunger, Donbass – the United Nations has not had much positive press. Disenchantment with the Organisation, particularly in the more developed countries, has grown as various crises threaten their prosperity.

This is a very uncharitable and narrow view of the United Nations. There are many areas in which the United Nations been a vital force, many regions where Blue Helmets were the only acceptable foreign presence. The criticism of the UN falls short in that it conflates the two roles the Organisation plays: one as a forum for negotiations and the other as an executive body. Most dissatisfaction with the United Nations, when considered closely, is directed at the second role, the not infrequent failure of the Security Council to live up to our morality. However, it would be myopic to disregard the UN’s unsung successes in the several other aspects of the executive function, not to mention the importance of its negotiating platform.

Although despair at the UN seems to run high among policy wonks, the Organisation enjoys robust support among the public. In a 2011 Gallup poll, the UN registered greater approval than disapproval in 106 of 126 countries surveyed. Overall, 44 per cent of the people surveyed responded positively about the UN while only 17 per cent disapproved. The UN was most unpopular in the Middle East, North Africa, and the United States while its most ardent supporters were from Sub-Saharan Africa; 61 per cent of Qataris disapproved of the UN while 86 per cent of Sierra Leoneans approved of it. This spread is not surprising when seen as indicative of the UN’s successes and failures.

Some of the United Nation’s greatest hits includes food aid to war-torn, impoverished, and famine-struck countries. Since 1961, the World Food Programme (WFP) has been one of the most effective multilateral efforts against global hunger. With a workforce of only 11,500 people, the WFP, on average, feeds some 80 million people in 75 countries. Even better, the group fights to prevent future hunger by helping communities build food assets and providing them education and training in agriculture, food security, procurement, nutrition, logistics, and other related topics. Similarly, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) have worked with the international poor by providing them microloans and grants for agricultural activities that not only feed them but also alleviate their poverty. Set up in 1977, IFAD has since reached over 430 million poor rural people.

The United Nations has also led the international effort against diseases such as HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, and polio. Through the World Health Organisation (WHO), Global Fund, and UNAIDS, the United Nations has provided medicines, including antiretroviral therapy, quinine, Rifampicin, Isoniazid, Salk vaccine, and sulfa drugs to millions of people; over 500 million insecticide-treated nets have been distributed to prevent malarial outbreaks. The UN has worked with other organisations and governments to raise funds, heighten awareness, and establish systems and protocols to prevent and fight epidemics. The successful campaign to eradicate smallpox is a testimony to the enormous work that has been put in by the UN, its affiliates, and cosponsors towards global health.

The cause of women and children has found a strong advocate in the United Nations. Expertise in mother and child health, family planning, and preventing sexually transmitted diseases has been shared with more than 100 countries via affiliates like the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). Definitive measures were taken to create sources of clean water and improve sanitation and nutrition. The Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has made great strides in promoting literacy and protecting children against exploitation. The United Nations has been an important forum in drafting international conventions to remove discrimination against women in the political, civil, economic, social, and cultural life. Women and children are among the worst affected by human trafficking and the narcotics trade. The Global Initiative to Fight Trafficking (UN.GIFT) works to foster awareness, consolidate global support, and counter trafficking in consultation with governments. A trust fund supports victims’ rehabilitation. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) provides states technical expertise on illicit drugs and detection to help law enforcement; it also provides legal services to help draft and implement domestic and international legislation to thwart the influence of narcotics on institutions and society.

The United Nations has developed impressive credentials in holding and monitoring elections. Just in the last 25 years, the United Nations Department of Political Affairs (UNDPA), through its Electoral Assistance Division (UNEAD), has provided technical, logistical, and other support to Cambodia, Iraq, El Salvador, East Timor, Mozambique, Afghanistan, Congo, South Africa, and Nepal to conduct free and fair elections. The UN has participated in over 300 projects in the same time period, at times in locations where the only foreign presence acceptable was the international organisation.

Credit must also be given the United Nations for attempting to create a legal framework for war crimes and genocide. A sensitive issue inextricably tied to national honour and sovereignty, input is taken from several sources – states, individuals, advocacy groups – and progress depends on nearly unanimous decisions of several parties. There has been some success, admittedly slow, on tribunals covering the erstwhile Yugoslavia, Sierra Leone, and Cambodia but funding is another hurdle.

Among the most visible activities that the United Nations performs is peacekeeping. In fact, the role is almost synonymous with the United Nations and seen as the raison d’etre for its formation in 1945. The Blue Helmets deserve credit for going into countries in which no one else had any interest. In several cases, neighbouring states were themselves too weak and divided to contribute to regional security. In Congo, Liberia, Kosovo, or Burundi, for example, the only alternative to UN peacekeepers would have been slaughter and mayhem. Most problems arising in UN peacekeeping operations are a result of vague mandates and the difficulty of managing troops from so many different sovereignties and varying capabilities and training. Currently, the United Nations is involved in 16 peacekeeping missions worldwide with an internationally contributed force of slightly over 118,000 troops, police, and civilian personnel. In many of these places, the UN is the most reliable institution on the ground.

Often underestimated is the United Nations’ presence as a forum for informal discussions on several issues of regional or international importance such as the removal of landmines, disarmament, nuclear proliferation, internet privacy, or climate change. The United Nations may not always take the lead in such discussions but the assembly of a permanent diplomatic conference facilitates low-key negotiations between parties in bilateral or even multilateral settings. Diplomats assigned to the New York office develop wide-ranging contacts and come to understand each other on a personal basis. Such anonymity and flexibility of exchanges are a great service to international diplomacy: their lack of publicity should not be taken to suggest that they are unimportant. On the contrary, the exact opposite is the case.

The most acrid criticism of the United Nations is reserved for its other most visible role – that as a security provider. The UN Security Council’s (UNSC) numerous failings are often cited as an indication that the UN has not lived up to its most important task. However, it must also be borne in mind that the United Nations was not created as a global gendarme, and there are practical as well as conceptual problems associated with demanding such a role. The Organisation is a collective of states and it is only with their permission that it can act on behalf of the world community. The United Nations has no independent army nor an economy by which to procure such an army; it depends on the contributions of its members to function in a military or civilian capacity.

The use of military force by the United Nations must have the support of all the Great Powers and the majority of the Security Council. Without this high standard of congruence, Hammarskjöld warned, no military action has an effective foundation with which to act. Furthermore, without such unanimity, the United Nations is susceptible to being transformed into a military alliance in a conflict between the Powers. The intervention in Korea demonstrated how dangerous such action could be if taken only by a simple majority of members. The United Nations was never designed to be an organ of collective security such as one of the alphabet soup of alliances the United States created during the early Cold War to contain the Soviet Union; rather, the aim was to create a universal system through which peace and other common goals may be pursued.

If the failings of the Great Powers diminish the UN, then it is a reflection of the prevailing world order and abandoning the Organisation will hardly contribute to peace and stability. Ultimately, though the nations of the world come together at the United Nations in false equality – one country, one vote – the Security Council is a reminder of global economic and military wherewithal. The UN is not truly an idealistic organisation as many suppose but a fairly pragmatic one, infused with just a little hope for a better tomorrow. To write off the UN because of difficulties or a few failures, Hammarskjöld reminded his audience in 1959, would mean, among other things, “to write off our hope of developing methods for international coexistence which offer a better chance than the traditional ones for truth, justice, and good sense to prevail.”

This past weekend, the UN crossed 70. I, for one, hope it has as many more.