ABSTRACT
The prolonged absence of formal relations with India was a unique but bitter foreign-policy experience for Israel. In both cases, a people with strong cultural and historic roots reclaimed its statehood around the same time and from the same colonial power, the British Empire. Among the few societies in Asia committed to democratic pluralism, a close relationship between Israel and India would only have been a natural development. With no direct conflicts or disputes, these nonIslamic countries in a region dominated by Islam could have forged close cooperation in a number of fields. Yet for over four decades such co-operative relations failed to materialize.
