Israel commemorates the passage of nearly three decades since the establishment of its relations with India, amid the growing cooperation between the two sides in the security, economic and military fields.

These lines raise questions about the most important paths of the two sides' relations, their most prominent interests, their most important areas, and their impact on increasing Israeli penetration into the Asian continent, the size of their security coordination, and their military and economic cooperation.

And the impact of this on the Palestinian issue, and Pakistan, the archenemy of India.

When did the Israeli-Indian relations begin?

Israel and India fully resumed their diplomatic relations in 1992, and while there is an embassy for India in Tel Aviv, Israel has an embassy in New Delhi, and two consulates in Mumbai and Bangalore. Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, in January 2017, stated that his foreign policy takes this geographical area into account.

While the year 2017 witnessed the visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Israel to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the establishment of their diplomatic relations, Netanyahu's visit to New Delhi in 2019 marked a turning point in their relationship, and culminated in his speech before the annual conference of the Indian Foreign Ministry, with the participation of representatives of 86 countries.

India welcomed the increase in the influence of Jewish organizations in it, and when it requested loans from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund for 5 billion dollars, it believed that developing its relations with Israel would facilitate the approval of the United States.

Where did the trade exchange between them?

India is Israel’s third largest Asian trading partner since 2014, and the tenth largest overall trading partner.

The Indian ambassador in Tel Aviv, Sanjib Singla, revealed that the volume of their two-way trade reached 5 billion dollars, compared to only 200 million dollars when they resumed their diplomatic relations in 1992.

The commercial and economic areas between them centered in fintech, the internet and electric cars, and water desalination, as well as analytical tools for laboratories, machine learning, and data management, as well as plans to maximize commercial potential.

The two countries set up an innovation fund worth $ 40 million, which funded 11 projects in industry, development and technology research, and their companies collaborated in the fields of water, agriculture, energy, health, information and communications.

How much has Israeli military exports reached India?

India is the largest buyer of Israeli military equipment, accounting for 49% of its total imports, which amounted to $ 15 billion, and Israel is the second largest defense resource to India after Russia, which makes them two main partners in military cooperation, especially Israel's effective contribution to modernizing the Indian army, Their military deals are a key element of their discussions.

The Israeli military support to India includes the supply of large quantities of weapons and technological means with military uses, such as drones, very sophisticated combat means, night vision tools, and electronic walls to improve control over the Indian borders, as well as ammunition, missiles, anti-aircraft and ground, as well as joint military maneuvers. .

The Israeli Air Industry revealed that India sold an air defense system worth $ 777 million of the Barg 8, which provides protection for its naval vessels, which confirms that their existing partnership in military sales goes back for many years, and has reached the stage of joint production, and provides Israeli air protection to India from any threats from the air. And the sea and the land.

What is the role of normalization in developing Indian-Israeli relations?

India welcomed the normalization agreements between a number of Arab countries and Israel, especially the UAE, as "their two strategic partners," while Saudi Arabia allowed Air India to travel to Israel through its airspace, and the company announced its intention to make 3 weekly flights to Israel via Saudi Arabia to shorten the flight time. .

While Israel is seeking to sign a free trade agreement with India, the latter is proceeding with the agreement with Israel to provide a direct flight route for its flights to Israeli airports, and in 2016, a 22% increase in the reciprocal air traffic occurred, and the number of their passengers reached a peak of 158,000.

Modi (right) and Netanyahu have a close friendship fueled by extremist ideological trends (Reuters)

Is Israel involved in the India-Pakistan conflict?

While the Indian subcontinent is witnessing an intermittent confrontation between India and Pakistan, a number of increasing indications have emerged regarding an Israeli role in fueling and escalating it, in light of the growing relations between Tel Aviv and New Delhi.

There have been reports of Israeli weapons, which play a pivotal role in those clashes between the two nuclear powers;

And that the Indian bombing of some Pakistani sites was carried out with Israeli Spice missiles.

The name of Israel was repeated in the confrontations in New Delhi and Islamabad, in light of India's possession of the Israeli Spider system, which took care of protecting its airspace from Pakistani espionage operations, and participated in designing the Indian security theory in its struggle against Pakistan.

It seems that the Israeli involvement in the Pakistani-Indian confrontation has solid roots in light of the strategic partnership between Israel and India, and it is taking on wider sectors in light of what they consider as common threats from the Islamic movements.

Where do the internal and external reasons lie in their growing relationships?

The increasing development in relations between New Delhi and Tel Aviv can be read in light of external factors such as the change in the balance of the global energy economy, the possibility of a decline in the exclusive ownership of this market by Arab countries, especially the oil-exporting countries, the launch of the peace process between Arabs and Israel in 1991, and their conflicts with Countries possessing non-conventional weapons: Israel is with Iran, and India is with Pakistan.

There are internal Indian reasons that accelerated the development of its relations with Israel, such as the exclusion of the Indian Congress party and the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party, which helped dispel any Indian fears of Israel, and turned it into a partner and ally against Pakistan and the Islamic movements, and the normalization of their relations came as a result of the economic liberal policy, and Israel became one of the countries The major economic that India wants to work with.

India and Israel see the Islamic movements as a common enemy for them, which prompted them to exchange security information, monitor the transfer of funds to armed organizations, learn about their recruitment methods, and train their members.

The armed attack on Bombay in 2008 also played a major role in enhancing their joint intelligence cooperation.

Did the personal relationship between Netanyahu and Modi affect the development of the two countries' relations?

What distinguishes the development of bilateral relations between New Delhi and Tel Aviv is the warm friendship between the Indian prime ministers, Narendra Modi, and the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and their commonalities, especially with regard to the latter’s plan to annex the West Bank, which he “temporarily” retracted, and the former’s policy towards Kashmir.

The two have ideological inclinations, which they are not ashamed of implementing, and while Modi is leading a drive to abolish the autonomy of the region, it is similar to what Netanyahu intended to do to annex parts of the West Bank.

 How did Israel benefit diplomatically from developing its relations with India?

Since the resumption of diplomatic relations between them, Tel Aviv and New Delhi have witnessed reciprocal visits, perhaps the most important of which is the visit of former prime ministers Ariel Sharon and the current Benjamin Netanyahu, current presidents Reuven Rivlin, former Shimon Peres and former Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon, while Israel has received many Indian visits, the most important of which is Narinda Modi, Prime Minister President Pranab Mukherjee and Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj have expressed a remarkable acceleration in the normalization of their relations.

In conjunction with the development of their diplomatic relations, India broke away from its traditional accession to the hostile camp against Israel, and in 2014 abstained from voting on a United Nations report on the Gaza war, and its diplomats are moving away from using harsh vocabulary against Israel, as usual.