India’s global role manifesting in the Middle East, it’s for New Delhi to decide: Israel envoy on mediation

Amid clamour for India playing a role of peacemaker or mediator in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Israel’s Ambassador to India, Reuven Azar, has said that the significance of New Delhi’s global role is increasing and it is also starting to manifest in the Middle East.

In an interview with ANI, Reuven Azar said it is for India to decide what role it wants to play.

“This would be up to India to decide, increasing importance of global role of India is obvious and it is starting to manifest also in the Middle East. We can see (this) not only in great relations between PM Modi and PM Netanyahu but also the initiative we saw last year of the growing bonds between the India and the UAE and the way they have been concluding agreements that would allow India to connect better to the Gulf (region), it will also serve as a hub to connect East and West,” he said.

He was responding to query about whether Israel sees India playing any role to bring peace in Israel-Palestine conflict.

Palestine’s envoy to India recently urged India to play a role of mediator in Israel-Palestine conflict.

India shares good relations with Israel and Palestine and has been following an independent foreign policy.

Last year, at the G20 summit held in New Delhi, US President Joe Biden announced the formation of the India-Middle-East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), a connectivity project aimed at increasing economic and physical connectivity between India, the Middle East, Europe, and the US.

The proposed corridor is facing major challenges due to conflicts and political instability in West Asia.

The Israeli envoy expressed optimism that once the conflict is over, economic cooperation will become prominent and the connectivity corridor will flourish.

“At the end of the day, countries that are partner in the Abraham Accords are working under more or less the same basis – which is we want to create stability and prosperity, we want to fight extremism, we need to see to work with the partners of the world, especially the US, to stabilise the region to be able to do trade safely. This is challenged by Houthis in Yemen and by other proxies of Iran,” Reuven Azar said.

“We want to be in a situation where we can create an understanding how to defend this effort together so all the understanding we are having over the table…at the end of the day, create a set up that would allow us to flourish in future,” he added.

Reuven Azar also lauded India’s position on Hamas terror attack last October in Israel.

“We are grateful for the support India has given since October 7. India took clear stand condemning terrorist attack of October 7 and also defending the right of self-defence of Israel. We share the values of acting according to international law,” Azar told ANI.

Israel’s envoy also called for isolating at the international fora those states that support terrorism. He also spoke on cooperation with India on counter-terrorism

“We are cooperating in many ways, most of the ways we cooperate we are not announcing to terrorists, we have to be prudent about it, we have to be responsible about it but rest assured it is happening,” he said.

“The question is whether beyond security and intelligence cooperation we can create diplomatic effort to isolate terrorists…question is how many countries you are going to convince to join us in this effort to isolate both terrorist and perpetrators, those countries that are sponsoring terrorism, they should be isolated,” he added.

Reuven Azar presented his credentials to President Droupadi Murmu on September 6 along with envoys of four other countries.