Click here for Part I.
Why in news?
Indian PM recently completed his 3 days visit to Israel.
What is the significance of the visit?
- India opened diplomatic relations with Israel in 1992.
- But for the last 25 years, India has always insisted on keeping its ties low-key.
- This is the first visit by an Indian Prime Minister to Israel.
- PM also broke the traditional pattern of jointly traveling to Tel Aviv and Ramallah.
- This is a deliberate effort to broadcast that India is de-hyphenating its relations with Israel and Palestine i.e dealing them as separate entities with separate interest.
- For India, the benefits of the trip are long term.
- Chinese are ahead of us in bilateral trade.
- Their companies are investing heavily in Israel’s cutting-edge start-ups.
- Excluding defence, bilateral trade between India and Israel is just around $5 billion. Most of it is in the diamond trade.
- Israel has become one of India’s most important weapons suppliers, after Russia and the US.
- Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) recently signed a $2-billion deal to supply missile systems to the Indian navy and $630-million agreement to sell air defence systems.
- But the seven deals signed suggest that India mainly hopes to leverage Israel’s skills in science and technology.
- Indian companies like Sun Pharma and ATG, a specialty tyre-maker, have big interests in Israel.
Why Israel is interested?
- Trade and defence ties have developed between the two in spite of the fluctuations of political events.
- India is also Israel’s biggest arms market, with an average of $1 billion of defense sales per year.
- Israel wants to consolidate these.
- Israel also wants to increase its contact with global super powers to break the pattern of years of isolation.
What should be done?
- Though India’s defence ties deepen with Israel, India has to tread carefully with the Arab States.
- It is because India is still dependent on it for a bulk of its energy requirements has millions of emigrants there.
Source: Business Line
