Jerusalem, July 12 (IANS) Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent remarks about developing alliances with India amid strained relations with the US reveal a structural shift and defence opportunities, a report said on Sunday.
Recently, Netanyahu said, “You have to build new alliances and develop new relationships. That’s what I’m doing right now with India”, during an interview.
According to a report from the Jerusalem Times, the remarks came amid a strain in the relationship between Israel and the US.
“According to reporting on the exchange, the American President (Donald Trump) told Netanyahu bluntly that patience had run out, that everyone was tired of him, and that Israel owed its very existence to American backing. (US Vice-President) JD Vance had gone further still, publicly casting the United States as Israel’s only real ally, a framing that, if left unanswered, would have conceded that Israel has no independent standing in the world at all. Netanyahu’s reply was pointed: Israel has ‘other friends, like India,'” the report said.
It added that the remarks regarding India are not just part of the niceties of a bilateral relationship but a rebuttal to a specific “insult” that suggested Israel is a dependent, not a partner. The rebuttal only works if the claim about India is substantively true.
“A Prime Minister does not reach for an empty gesture when his strategic legitimacy is being questioned by his own patron. He reaches for the thing he can actually point to. That is the fuller dimension of the statement: it is less about India as sentiment and more about India as evidence, proof that Israel has begun building an alternative that does not require American permission to exist,” the report added.
The ongoing discussions on defence between India and Israel make these comments something more than rhetorical improvisation, as Israel is running short on Industrial production of weapons, the report cites evidence to suggest a possible material relationship.
“Multiple reports over recent weeks describe Rafael Advanced Defence Systems negotiating with Indian private-sector manufacturers to establish a production line for Iron Dome’s Tamir interceptors on Indian soil… it is a proposal to manufacture the actual missile Israel depends on to survive daily rocket, drone, and cruise-missile fire,” the report said.
It said India solves a specific problem for Israel that no other country can quite match with its manufacturing depth and workforce scale to co-produce at volume.
“It (India) has no interest in dictating Israel’s regional posture in exchange for cooperation, unlike a patron relationship. And it has demonstrated, through decades of maintaining relations simultaneously with Washington, Moscow, the Gulf states, and Tehran, that it can absorb a defence partnership with Israel without being pulled into anyone’s bloc, which means Israel gains a partner without inheriting a new set of political conditions. That combination is genuinely rare,” the report from the Times of Israel highlighted.
–IANS
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