India: First-ever visit by an Israeli PM used to strengthen strategic ties
By
Wasantha Rupasinghe
27 January 2018
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s six-day visit to India last week highlighted the moves by both governments to further develop already close bilateral military-strategic and commercial ties. Netanyahu’s visit to India was the first ever by a sitting Israeli premier.
Last July, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi became the first Indian premier to visit the Zionist state, underscoring New Delhi’s determination to purge any lingering vestiges of its former “non-aligned” foreign policy in pursuit of closer ties with the US and its principal Middle East ally.
Ties between Israel and India are burgeoning in the context of rapidly escalating global tensions. Both countries are key allies of US imperialism, Israel in Washington’s reckless drive to consolidate its hegemony in the Middle East by pushing back Iranian influence, and India in the US drive to economically, strategically and militarily isolate China.
Modi’s BJP government has transformed India into a front line state in the US military-strategic offensive against China. Modi has also moved to develop closer bilateral and trilateral ties with Japan and Australia, Washington’s two most important Asia-Pacific allies. In November, India joined a US-led, anti-China quadrilateral strategic dialogue with Japan and Australia, which the Trump administration hopes to develop into a NATO-type alliance.
India sees its closer ties with Israel as a means of pursuing New Delhi’s strategic interests, mainly by securing the supply of arms and advanced military technology. Modi’s Hindu-supremacist BJP also has very definite ideological interests in deepening ties with Israel, especially…