Hyderabad: Member of the Congress Working Committee and chairperson of the Congress foreign affairs department, Salman Khurshid said the Centre needs to recalibrate its relationship with Israel and “adopt shades of grey”, saying the current relationship between the two countries is “inconsistent and lacking in moral clarity.”
“There cannot be a black and white approach to foreign policy, and there are things on which you cannot have immediate and conclusive statements. There need to be shades of grey, and we must ensure we do not veer towards the dark side and remain on the bright side,” he said, speaking to reporters at the Bharat Summit in Hyderabad on Friday.
Even as India and Israel have strategic ties and consider each other “friends,” the former external affairs minister criticised India’s current position on the Israel-Gaza conflict. He criticised the current Bharatiya Janata Party-led government for failing to play a role in the West-Asian crisis, adding that India has a responsibility to “declare guardrails and red lines” so the relationship does not remain “purely transactional”.
Khurshid’s remarks come amid a proposed business engagement between Israeli companies and Telangana, where the Congress is in power. The state government-backed start-up enabler T-Hub has invited 20 Israeli technology, artificial intelligence and defence manufacturing companies for a business-to-business (B2B) meeting scheduled for 16 November.
The initiative is a collaboration between the Telangana government’s Information Technology, Electronics and Communications Department and the Israel Economic Mission to South India. The participating companies represent sectors including defence technology, robotics, cybersecurity, semiconductors and artificial intelligence.
Asked about the apparent contradiction between the Congress calling for intervention in Gaza and Telangana facilitating business engagements with Israeli companies, Khurshid said the proposed meetings “need to be flagged”.
“When governments deal with other governments, it is important that people share sufficient information with their own citizens to ensure that there is public pressure to build up on even a friendly government to not do the things they are doing which do not sit comfortably with our own ethical and moral view,” he said.
Meanwhile, civil society groups in Hyderabad have demanded that the Telangana government suspend the November 16 meeting with the Israeli companies. The groups alleged that five of the companies invited by T-Hub supply technology used by Israeli forces in Gaza.
Addressing a press conference in Hyderabad, Umar Farooq Qadri, state coordinator of the Association for Protection of Civil Rights (APCR), Telangana; SQ Masood, secretary of ASEEM; Mohd Faraz Ahmed, state president of the Students Islamic Organisation (SIO), Telangana; social activist Sarah Mathews; and independent researcher Srinivas Kodali released a joint statement titled “Global Justice Cannot Be a Conference Theme Alone: Telangana Must Not Facilitate Business Engagements That Risk Enabling Israel’s Military Operations.”
(Edited by Anupama Yadav)