Bharat Karnad
The Indian government has been hoisted on to the horns of a dilemma. The rightwing coalition government in Israel of Benjamin Netanyahu, not unreasonably, seeks universal branding of the Hamas (Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya — Islamic Resistance Movement) as a terrorist organisation in order to justify its all-out military campaign launched in the Gaza Strip. It was in response to the surprise combined arms attack October 7 on the nearby Israeli kibbutz (farming cooperative) and small towns across the “iron wall” the Israelis built along the border with Gaza to keep themselves safe. Had this Iron Wall worked as advertised, there would have been no Israel-Hamas war.
The so-called “Iron Wall” is a high advanced-tech steel wire fence interspersed with towers mounting machine guns slaved to banks of surveillance sensors, including aerostats (large ground-tethered balloons with radars and thermal sensors, cameras, and other devices that maintain a 24/7 vigil). The machine guns automatically fire in “kill zones” that cover the length of the wall on the Israel-Gaza border the instant sensors at any time detect breaches of the wall.
It is a solution, incidentally, the Indian government considered buying into to prevent infiltration across the Line of Control in J&K by Pakistan-based jihadi groups. But it was deterred by the high price. Just as well, because while it cost Israel a billion dollars to install this protective border complex, it took the lead Hamas elements only a few seconds to “blind” the thermal and imagery sensors, and a few precision drone bomblets dropped on the towers, to render the wall useless, and allow the Hamas fighters to flow unimpeded into Israel. The Israeli “iron dome” air defence system, was likewise defeated by a too large barrage of rockets fired from within Gaza.
So far so conventional military-wise innovative. Combined with the motorised gliders and high-quality coordinated actions by air, land and seaborne units conducted in “radio silence”, ‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ marked the Hamas out as a force that had transited from hit and run actions to planning and carrying out a genuinely imaginative military breaching operation, and a uniquely effective proto-military in embryo of a future independent state of Palestine, whatever its current relationship with the civilian Palestinian Authority running the show in Gaza.
After the initial successes in nullifying the Israeli wall, the combined arms units began moving inland. And that’s when things began going very wrong. The Hamas fighters went rogue. Rigged up in proper battle uniforms and gear, they reverted to being terrorists — indiscriminately shooting up unsuspecting Israelis on the streets, lobbing grenades into basements filled with terrified defenceless people seeking shelter, surging into the Kibbutz Be’eri and killing everyone they saw on sight as they roamed the gated compound, and taking hundreds of men, women and children hostage. It lost Hamas its hard won status as a conventional military force deserving of respect.
In other words, Hamas proved to be a terrorist group after all, like the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba in Kashmir — a fact the Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu reminded his good friend Narendra Modi about, by declaring the LeT a terrorist outfit in the runup to the 15th anniversary of the heinous 26/11 seaborne strike by the Lashkar on Mumbai in 2008. (Of course, the then Congress party government of Manmohan Singh, memorably, did nothing by way of retaliation.) It has put the Indian Prime Minister in a bind, especially because the Modi government has come out in favour of a “two-state solution” for Palestine that the Israelis are skeptical about. This is a compromise the Indian government has pushed and is a later development. Because, with the partition of India in mind, New Delhi in 1948 opposed the partitioning also of Palestine.
Netanyahu’s gambit is not only to blunt the political effects in West Asia of New Delhi’s advocacy for Palestine and Israel coexisting together, but also of the Mission of Arab foreign ministers making the rounds of various capitals presently in India seeking Modi’s support for, in effect, ending the Israeli military operations against Hamas, an option Netanyahu rejected out of hand when mooted by the US.
The Modi government cannot but revel in Israel’s coming down on India’s side where LeT and other Pakistan-sponsored jihadi outfits are concerned. But equally, it has to be mindful of the consequences of its adopting a too-pro Israel stance on Modi’s wildly successful policy of cultivating the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia.
Had Hamas’ initial military actions not degenerated into rank terrorism, Modi’s problem might have been trickier to deal with. But now New Delhi cannot but side with Tel Aviv because Hamas’ deplorable behaviour is akin to the LeT’s targeting mainland Indians and Indian troops in Kashmir. And if a harsh Indian response to LeT terror is appropriate in J&K, so is Israeli belligerance in Gaza.
The specific issue of India reciprocating by labelling Hamas a terrorist gang and thus legitimating the Israeli conduct of war in Gaza can be put off for the nonce, but cannot be avoided for long. Not if the conflict in West Asia festers and undoes the lasting rapprochement between Israel and UAE and Bahrain, with Saudi Arabia to follow, promised by the September 2020 Abrahamic Accord. Because then both the sides will be calling in their IOUs.
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