There was once a time of India’s close bonding with Palestine | Humra Quraishi

8 August 2024

Seeing the anarchy spreading out as never before, I’m reminded of Gulzar saab’s words, commenting on the halaats around, along the strain that if one were to pick up the day’s newspapers, they’d be so heavily laced with news reports of violent killings that just by squeezing those pages blood drops would spill out! Gulzar saab said so during one of his book launches here in New Delhi, just before 2017 had ended. Today, of course, the situation stands compounded, with violence spreading out not just here but elsewhere too…in so many lands, affecting hundreds and thousands!

The worst hit is Palestine. A nightmare for the Palestinians. The havoc is ongoing. No halt. No sign of a ceasefire. Human tragedies compounding with the situation worsening every single day. Those shots and videos and photographs of the Palestinians dying with injuries and hunger and thirst and acute distress, cling on to you …your eyes refuse to let go of those images until they penetrate right into you, hitting where it hits the utmost – your soul.

Yet the so-called world leaders seem failing to halt this genocide. Why? Are they blind to these constant killings and bombardments, where even refuge and schools and hospitals and shelter sheds of the Palestinians are not spared by the Israeli forces

The two earlier envoys of Palestine posted in India, Dr Khaled Sheikh and Osama Musa had during the course of interviews with me emphasized the fact that “without the American government’s support Israel would be zero!â€

In fact, the envoys several Arab countries had put across the fact that people’s anger was mounting against America, “as our masses do realize that American policies would hit if not kill and destroy us one day.†They had told me that the Arab governments were cautious in their approach but the masses were openly talking of the ‘invisible army’ of the America and Allies more than intruding in their lands…Also, academics seemed to have unearthed the mystery of the surfacing of the well-organized terror outfits! “The basic fact is that groups like the ISIS and the Taliban and also the Al - Qaeda have been set up by the American and Israeli Intelligence agencies in the midst of the so-called ‘Muslim world’. With internal strife and civil war accelerating, the leaderless masses have nil resources to fight the masterminds! Ruled that they are by proxy governments!â€

When I interviewed the well-known Arab academic, Clovis Maksoud – who was then Professor of International Relations and director of the Centre for Global South at the American University in Washington and before that he had served as the Arab League ambassador to India from 1961- 66 and later ambassador to the United Nations and the US – he dwelt on the fact that people of the Arab countries had come to realize the vested interests of “outsiders†, to destroy their lands…Clovis had detailed why the Arab governments were not taking on American intrusions, “There is a broad strategic dependence of the Arab States on the US, based on the false assumption that the US is the only power that can make Israel respond to the Palestinian issue. This dependence is flawed because Israel has flouted all international norms. Israel is the only country that has never declared its boundaries since 1967. It has not acknowledged the fact that it’s an occupying power and given itself the license to expand its settlements This has meant violating the U.N resolution of the 4th Geneva Convention that does not allow any occupying power to alter the boundaries of the country it occupies…At the same time, the US has chosen to make Israel its principal ally and this has given Israel the license to defy the UN convention with impunity.â€

And the former Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s son, Saif-el–Islam was specific when he spoke of “outside interests†behind the anarchy in their lands. In the autumn of 2001, when Saif-el-Islam ( he was also called ‘Engineer’ though he was an architect) landed in New Delhi I interviewed him for a national daily. He came across as brilliant and well-aware of the changing world order…Saif was probably more critical of the US than his father. To quote him - “It’s just that the US being a superpower, it considers it to be its right to impose embargoes or bomb and attack another country. And all those small countries who bear the brunt of all this have no choice but to view this as a form of aggression and view the US as an aggressor.â€

Today, of course, the ‘outsider’ America has become the ‘insider’ in several of the Arab countries, because of its expansionist plans and strategic policies.

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Today’s reality!

See, today where have we come down to …Indian government’s apparent slant towards Israel and Allies. This pro-Israel tilt has been more than obvious right from 2014.

What a contrast to India’s stand under Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi. The fact is that Jawaharlal Nehru’s vision and policies vis-a-vis West Asia made the entire ‘Arab world tilt towards India. He was clear about his stand on the Middle East and Palestine, and with that made the Arabs and West Asians strong allies of India. Today there’s no Nehru and there’s little trace of the connection with the Middle East.

I have attended Press Conferences of fiery Palestinian envoys to India and the emotions they’d generated amongst the Indian masses. I do recall rather too vividly that warm hug that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat gave Indira Gandhi when she had hosted an elaborate reception for him at a five-star hotel here in New Delhi. Indira Gandhi’s office had sent invites to even middle-rung Muslim families besides the usual list of the who’s who. Of course, those were the days when there were no security phobias. No hyped statements. That was a phase of the Government of India’s close bonding with Palestine.

I recall the receptions hosted by the then-Iraqi envoys in the impressive bungalow on the Prithvi Raj Road which was gifted by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru to the first Iraqi envoy posted to India in the 1950s. But then Iraq was actually Iraq! When celebrations of Iraq’s national day and other significant days were marked with a series of receptions, with Iraqi intellectuals, editors and writers, and the top creamy brass flying down here, from Iraq to New Delhi … Of course, that before it was intruded into and ruined by American and Allied Forces on that alibi of ‘looking for weapons of mass destruction’ but didn’t manage to find any! Instead, destroyed that land, its very fabric, its people, an ancient civilization.

Today several Arab countries are battling for sheer survival, devastated by externally sponsored intruders, who have ‘used’ the age-old Western ploy of creating a civil war-like situation, with which the local communities are provoked to kill and destroy each other!

Look what a dark phase we are witnessing… Palestinians are so very brutally killed yet there seems no halt to the genocide!