Israel’s first PM called Nehru a ‘great man’. Asked him to moderate peace in the region

David Ben-Gurion appealed to Nehru to help mediate with Egypt in 1963, ‘Your voice, my dear Prime Minister, carries a special weight in the councils of the world,’ he wrote.

File photo of David Ben-Gurion and Jawarlahal Nehru | Commons

The Israel-Hamas war has been going on for more than 100 days now, with no sign it would end anytime soon. Hamas chooses to keep more than 120 hostages, and Israel is adamant about continuing the military response. More than two million people in Gaza are homeless, distraught, and without food and medicine. The desperate families of Israeli hostages are out on the streets protesting with the slogan ‘Bring Them Home Now’. Perhaps they understand that the war their leaders have waged will be unsuccessful in recovering their loved ones.

The conflict has frustrated many mediators in the past, so it’s unlikely that there will be a mediator this time around. The Palestinian envoy to Delhi suggested, in an interview with Scroll, that India should mediate as it has historical support and trust with the Palestinians and a strategic partnership with Israel. Unlike the United States or European powers, India has a better chance as a bipartisan player trusted enough by both parties. The President of Israel, Isaac Herzog, also said that India, as a very important nation in the world, can be the voice of reason and security for Israel and the region.

Mediation is a tricky business in international politics, and India still needs to gain experience. But this isn’t the first time India has been called upon to intervene in the conflict. According to Israeli archives, Jawaharlal Nehru was asked to mediate, in 1963, by Israel’s first and then-Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion.

Diplomatic distance

Ben-Gurion was fond of Nehru, despite the latter’s diplomatic distance from Israel and his support for the Palestinian cause. This was an unprecedented and unrepeatable phenomenon in Israel’s diplomatic history. Nehru’s democratic leadership, secular politics, and socialist instincts attracted Ben-Gurion’s attention. “Democracy in India is one of the greatest marvels of our time. Undoubtedly, this has been largely due to the personality of Nehru…” he had said when he was invited to deliver a speech on ‘Democracy in the World’ at the Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions, an influential think-tank in California in 1963.

India, under Nehru, kept a diplomatic distance from Israel for various reasons including immediate national interest and the non-resolution of the Israel-Arab/Palestine issue. There was one small window when Nehru was about to initiate full diplomatic relations with Israel: in March 1952. As prime minister and foreign minister, he instructed civil servants to prepare a budget for establishing a resident mission in Tel Aviv. After the first general election of 1951, such a possibility was first restrained due to budgetary constraints and later due to the Suez Canal crisis—when Britain, France, and Israel attacked Egypt in 1956.

Back then, other immediate concerns were more pressing for Nehru than the question of Israel. India, after Partition, was consumed by aggressive Pakistan and the dispute over Kashmir and Hyderabad, which soon became international as Nehru took the matter to the United Nations. India wanted Arab states to support New Delhi and not Pakistan. Not having relations with Israel was India’s offer of solidarity with the Arabs.

This geopolitical manoeuvring was not to everyone’s taste. JB Kripalani, an eminent Congress leader and party president during 1946-47, expressed his anguish over India’s non-relations with Israel. “I myself have visited Israel. I personally met Mr David Ben-Gurion at his Ashram [an interesting choice of word for the kibbutz, Sde Boker, where Ben-Gurion lived his last years]. I know the interest that he took in our ancient wisdom. I have already spoken in Parliament that we should have close relations with Israel. But our government is afraid of the Arab countries. Though they do not help us in any way,” he said in April 1966, two years after Nehru’s death. The Arab states did not support India on the Kashmir issue, and that pushed Kripalani to criticise India’s non-diplomatic relations with Israel.

Nehru’s voice

India’s immediate national interests, such as oil and the sensitive issue of Kashmir, determined its foreign policy in the Middle East. A young state like Israel could offer little to India in tangible terms in comparison to the Arab states. Also, as a so-called “Third World” leader, Nehru wanted to stand with the Palestinians. Nevertheless, Ben-Gurion held Nehru in very high regard and was not offended by the fact that he kept his distance from Israel. “It is not for me to judge him [for his frostiness towards Israel]. He is a great man. I admire him. There is democracy in India; it is the only country in Asia which is democratic except Japan. If Nehru goes, I am not sure what will happen; but [for] now it has democracy,” Ben-Gurion told US President John F Kennedy in May 1961.

It is not typical for a head of state to keep admiring a counterpart who has yet to establish relations with them. Still, Ben-Gurion had such a flattering view of Nehru that in 1963, after an entire decade of fruitlessly pursuing diplomatic relations with India, he wrote a letter to Nehru asking him to mediate with Gamal Abdul Nasser of Egypt, who was getting arms from the Soviet Union to attack Israel. Ben-Gurion was worried when Nasser achieved a pact with Syria and Jordan in 1963 against Israel. Knowing that Nehru was a good friend of Nasser, he reached out to him, saying, “Your voice, my dear Prime Minister, carries a special weight in the councils of the world, and as one of your admirers, I should like to believe that you will use your great international influence to the full to dissuade the President of Egypt from embarking on the perilous adventure he talks of and convince him that he should initiate peace negotiations with Israel.”

In response, Nehru wrote to him, “I agree with you that, in the present situation, it is more than ever necessary to direct all our efforts to the lowering of international tension, the preservation of peace and the strengthening of the United Nations”. But 1963 was a grim year for Nehru; he was dealing with political and strategic setbacks in the aftermath of China’s attack. He did not recover and died in 1964.

Israel and Egypt resolved their conflict in 1978—after fighting wars in 1967 and 1973—and so did Jordan and Israel in 1993.

The Israel-Palestine conflict is still unresolved, and the current war between Israel and Hamas won’t help deliver peace between the two. Hamas is a radical and violent organisation that has yet to commit to the two-state solution. Israel’s hardliners have hoodwinked themselves for so long that they can do without ending the occupation of the Palestinian territories. Any mediation is bound to fail, as it did in the Oslo Accords, unless both sides exhaust the misconceptions of their ideas and misgivings of each other. Mediation can work only when the two parties are sincerely ready for peace. People—whether they defend their state, like Israelis, or fight for a state, like the Palestinians—are fallible human beings without authentic leadership that can take them out of the recycling violence.

Dr Khinvraj Jangid writes from Tel Aviv. He is Associate Professor and Director, Centre for Israel Studies, Jindal School of International Affairs, OP Jindal Global University, Sonipat. He is visiting faculty at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. Views are personal.

(Edited by Theres Sudeep)