New Delhi: Israel has come out in support of India’s “right to self defence” after New Delhi’s precision air strikes against nine sites in Pakistan, and Pakistan occupied Kashmir in the early hours of Wednesday.
“Israel supports India’s right for self defense. Terrorists should know there’s no place to hide from their heinous crimes against the innocent,” Reuven Azar, Ambassador of Israel to India said in a statement on the social media platform X.
Azar was one of the earliest ambassadors to convey official condolences following the terrorist attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam, which left 26 tourists, including 25 Indians and one foreign national, dead on 22 April.
A couple of days after the attack in Pahalgam, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, where he labelled the attack as an “Islamist terrorist attack” in Kashmir.
“I spoke today with Indian Prime Minister @narendramodi and expressed my condolences, and those of the people of Israel, to the people of India following the Islamic terrorist attack in Kashmir. Prime Minister Modi thanked me for sharing in India’s grief and emphasized that our two countries stand shoulder to shoulder in the critical fight against murderous terrorism,” Netanyahu said on the call with Modi on 24 April.
Modi “shared the barbaric nature of the cross border terrorist attack and reiterated India’s firm resolve to bring the perpetrators and their supporters to justice” said India’s read out of the call with Netanyahu.
On 7 October, 2023, hours after the news first broke of Hamas’s attack on Israel, which left at least 1,100 Israelis dead, the Indian Prime Minister said that New Delhi “stands in solidarity” with Tel Aviv, adding that he was “deeply shocked” by the “terrorist attack.”
The strategic ties between New Delhi and Tel Aviv have evolved over the past few years, with Israel becoming a key partner for Indian procurement of arms and ammunition. In the immediate aftermath of the Pahalgam terrorist attack, Azar, the Israeli ambassador had offered to deepen cooperation to combat terrorist with India, according to media reports.
In the early hours of Wednesday, Indian armed forces launched air strikes at nine sites in Pakistan, including Bahawalpur in Pakistan Punjab, along with other sites in Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK).
According to the Ministry of Defence, the strikes were “focused, measured and non-escalatory in nature” not aimed at any Pakistani military facility. Pakistan has vowed retaliation for the strikes, with cross-border shelling seen across the Line of Control (LoC).
Indian National Security Adviser Ajit Doval has briefed his American counterpart and Secretary of State of Marco Rubio on the strikes, while senior Indian officials have briefed their counterparts in the UK, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, according to sources.
(Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri)
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