ABSTRACT
While Kumaraswamy in his admirably researched book India’s Israel Policy analyses the arguments and circumstances which led India to vote against UN Resolution 181 of 1947 which partitioned Palestine into two states, he seems to have overlooked an important element while scrutinising and criticising India’s stand. India had taken the question of Pakistan’s aggression to the United Nations Security Council where the same Western countries were very hostile to India. The Gulf countries seem open to India playing a bigger, more substantive role, including in the security sphere. The cooperation between them and us in the common fight against terrorism has taken on a strategic dimension. We need to take a long-term view of the situation and maintain close relations with both sides, as all successive governments have done. The birth of Israel had coincided with the trauma of the sub-continent’s partition and the First Arab–Israeli War had more or less coincided with the first India–Pakistan war over Kashmir.
