By recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, the facade of US neutrality on the Palestine –Israel issue has been lost. Trumps shifting US embassy to Jerusalem is a body blow to Palestinian cause. In so doing United States has taken sides and granted sovereignty of entire Jerusalem to Israel.  The consequences of this move are impossible to predict other than the fact that this will further destabilise a highly disturbed and inflamed Middle East. Do the Palestinians have anything else to lose? They are totally abandoned by their erstwhile staunch supporters: India and Saudi Arabia.

 In the perception of Palestinians both these nations are in cahoots with the United States and Israel.  United States of America has abdicated its role as a mediator and has now become a declared party to the conflict. India has abandoned Palestinians in support of Israel. In fact India and Israel, with the support of the US, continue to violate the internationally recognized inalienable right of self-determination of the Kashmiri and Palestinian people. Saudi Arabia would do anything to save the House of Saud.

In the Editorial of the London Institute of South Asia Journal Issue 44, I wrote, “India has been a devoted, committed and steadfast client of the Soviet Union but when the USSR was disintegrated, India jumped the US-Israeli bandwagon and it took to it as fish takes to water. The most striking commonality is their perception of Islam and China as their ultimate common enemy. Indian military occupation of Kashmir and Israeli military occupation of Palestine and Arab territories   makes them natural partners. With this wither India’s pro Palestine policy, its secular outlook, its non aligned status and now all this is replaced by religious intolerance, Hindutva, apartheid (against Dalits and other scheduled castes and tribes) , Islamophobia and national arrogance.”

India seems to have given up the non-alignment principle of its foreign policy as it has given up secularism in favour of religious fundamentalism (Hindutva). Israel and India are now trying to change the demographics of Kashmir and Palestine through migrations and settlements and expanding the borders of their lands of occupation. Alan Hart says, “What will happen on India’s journey into the future must, of course, be a matter for Crystal Ball gazing (speculation) but we can now be certain of one thing. One of India’s most valued companions for its journey will be the Zionist (not Jewish) state of Israel. When Prime Minister Modi became the first Indian head of state to visit Israel last July, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said to him, “I have a feeling that India and Israel are changing our world.”

In some respects India and Israel are natural travelling partners. Both, for example, give life to oppression – India with its de-humanizing caste system and Israel with its treatment of the Palestinians. (Question for Netanyahu: Is that what you mean by changing our world – more oppression?)”

On Modi visit to Israel in 2017, The Independent, a British daily wrote, ‘this is more than a historic visit. Prime ministers from India always took a balanced and sensitive approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the past. Not Modi. He won’t even bother meeting with Palestinians during his visit. What we are watching, in slow motion, is the biggest realignment of the global order since the Second World War’. As one Indian writer put it, Indian nationalists “not only envisage India following Israel’s apartheid model to deal with the minorities at home, but also always dream of turning India into an aggressive state like Israel”.

Together Israel and India duly supported by the United Sates could be the biggest danger to the world peace.

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