With no immediate likelihood of a ceasefire, and Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch joining a growing list of organisations and institutions classifying Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide, it is fair to say that Gaza demonstrates an extraordinary failure of international diplomacy.
The question of Palestine has been on the agenda of the United Nations (UN) since February 1947. It is perhaps the best known and longest discussed question of self determination in the world. Every intricacy of the Palestinian condition has been documented threadbare by international institutions for over seven decades. How then, one might ask, could the international community allow this genocide to occur? The answer lies in an uncomfortable admission – diplomacy has done little to stem the relentless tide of erasure and replacement of the Palestinian people.
To craft a meaningful alternative diplomacy on Palestine, it is important to understand the genocide as a form of colonial erasure, the role played by diplomacy (including Indian diplomacy) within the framework of the two-states solution in promoting this erasure, and finally the need to return to a more principled approach, which centres human rights in the question of Palestinian self determination.
Genocide as colonial erasure
The genocide in Gaza is not merely a disproportionate response to the October 7 Hamas attacks. It is, in the words of the UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese, a part of a “long term, intentional and systematic state organised forced displacement and replacement of the Palestinian people”. International diplomacy has played its own role in promoting this erasure.
On November 29, 1947, despite desperate opposition from the Arab states, India, Turkey and Iran, the UN voted to partition the mandatory territory of Palestine into a Jewish state (with 56% of the land) and a smaller Arab state with international control being retained over the city of Jerusalem. This partition plan was never implemented.
Violence erupted in Palestine and Zionist militias commenced what was later termed Plan Dalet – a systematic ethnic cleansing of Arab neighbourhoods, towns and villages from areas within the territory earmarked for the Jewish state and also in certain towns (like Jaffa) that fell within the proposed Arab state in the partition plan. As Palestinian armed resistance to this onslaught failed and the British forces refused to intervene, Palestinian refugees (an estimated 400,000 by May 1948) flooded the neighbouring Arab capitals and pressure grew on the Arab states to respond.
On May 14,1948, on the basis of the UN resolution, the Jewish state declared independence and the creation of the new state of Israel, and the Arab states declared war. For a multitude of reasons, the Arab armed intervention failed. By the time the UN mediated a ceasefire, the new state of Israel occupied 78% of mandatory Palestine, while the only two Arab states with any real militaries occupied the rest – Jordan occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and Egypt occupied the wider Gaza Strip. The lines of this ceasefire within mandatory Palestine came to be known as the “green line”. In 1967, pursuant to the so called Six Days War, Israel occupied the entirety of mandatory Palestine.
Since 1967, all Palestinians in mandatory Palestine have lived under direct or indirect Israeli control and have been subject to an ongoing programme of displacement, erasure and replacement. Palestinians who live within the green line, have Israeli citizenship, but not equal rights. A second set live under a complicated permit regime administered by Israel in illegally annexed East Jerusalem, without any citizenship. A third set live under direct Israeli military occupation in the West Bank (under the nominal rule of the Palestinian Authority) and the rest live in Gaza, where, they are currently being subjected to genocide by Israel.
The Oslo peace process, which gained several concessions for Israel (including recognition of the state of Israel by the Palestinian people) offered the Palestinians nothing except recognition of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and vague future hopes of a viable Palestinian state. Instead of furthering Palestinian interests, the Oslo process erased the fundamental power asymmetry between Israel and the Palestinian people living under Israeli occupation from the diplomatic rhetoric.
It turned the Palestinian cause from a national liberation struggle against colonialism to a territorial dispute between “two sides”. This false equivalence, between Israel, and the Palestinian people living under Israeli occupation, obfuscated global diplomatic responses to Israeli expansionism for the next three decades.
Between 1992 and the collapse of the Oslo process in 2000, the settler population in the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt) increased from 105,400 to 198,300. In 2003, the UNGA (including India) voted overwhelmingly to refer the question of the construction of a so-called “security fence” by Israel in the oPt to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for an advisory opinion.
Despite the ICJ ruling that the construction was illegal, it continued and was completed in 2007 further fragmenting the oPt. Even the 2005 withdrawal of settlements from Gaza and the replacement of direct military control with a blockade did not reduce the absolute number of settlers. By 2023, the number of settlers had reached 503,732. More than the absolute numbers, the geographic spread of these settlements and outposts through the oPt, together with the barriers and restrictions placed on Palestinian movement around these settlements had by 2014 ensured a comprehensive fragmentation of the West Bank.
In 2016, unable to ignore the proliferation of settlements and evictions in the oPT, the US did not veto security council resolution 2334, which created fresh international consensus on the status of the oPt. The resolution called for a freeze on settlements, evictions and demolitions in the oPt and reiterated the invalidity of the acquisition of territory by force, and called on Israel to comply with its obligations as an occupying power under international humanitarian law. And yet, as with Oslo, the resolution did little to actually halt Israeli settlements, evictions and demolitions of Palestinian homes.
The most devastating consequence of the Oslo “two states” rhetoric has, however, been in the global support for Israel’s “right to self defence” against Gaza in the aftermath of October 7. Despite the ICJ ruling in the 2004 Wall opinion that no international law right of self defence can be exercised by an occupying power (Israel) in a territory it occupies, the two states rhetoric of Oslo ensured that the powers of the world rallied behind Israel’s “right of self defence”. A decision that led directly to the long (and ongoing) campaign of genocide in Gaza.
India and Palestine
While the external affairs ministry may deny India’s diplomatic abandonment of the Palestinian cause, it is clear that India has done little to advance the Palestinian interests in recent years. While this abandonment is often linked to the Narendra Modi years and the rise of Hindu nationalism in India, its roots go further back.
Between 1947 and 1984, Indian diplomacy on Palestine was driven by three guiding principles: the right of self-determination, a recognition that such self-determination could not be properly exercised until all Palestinian refugees were allowed to return to their homes (the “right of return”), and a broader conflation of Zionism with colonialism and racism. This slotted comfortably into India’s larger ambitions at the time to build the non-aligned movement (NAM) and to demonstrate the newly independent nation’s moral commitment to decolonisation (at least in other parts of the world).
The sharpest shift in Indian diplomacy with respect to Palestine was perhaps between the Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi years. This was in line with Rajiv Gandhi’s markedly different attitude towards the West and some of his key advisors reportedly viewing Israel as a pathway to American favour. In this period there were notably no further references to Zionism as a form of racism or racial discrimination, imperialism or colonialism.
India, which had, in 1983, condemned the massacres of Sabra and Shatilla in the strongest possible terms as an act of genocide, and encouraged NAM members to boycott Israel in the aftermath, was, by 1990, actively seeking to build a relationship with Israel. The end of the Cold War was to accelerate this. In December 1991, India quietly voted in favour of a UNGA resolution revoking an earlier General Assembly determination of Zionism as a form of racism and racial discrimination. By 1992, India had opened an embassy in Tel Aviv and established full diplomatic and trade relations with Israel.
In the decade that followed, Indian diplomats also used the Oslo peace process to step back from actively advocating for the Palestinian cause. The diplomatic rhetoric of this period was characterised by the same deliberate blindness demonstrated by the rest of the world to the power asymmetry in the relationship between Israel and the Palestinian people – generally urging all sides to refrain from actions that could jeopardise the peace process.
Indian interventions on Palestine at the UN in the early Modi years were not dramatically different from the later Congress years. They replaced any real vocal diplomatic support with modest humanitarian aid to Palestine, and continued to ignore the power asymmetry between both sides. There was however a greater willingness to publicly acknowledge India’s closeness to Israel.
File photo of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Indian prime minister Narendra Modi. Photo: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Israel.
Over time, India also dropped references to a capital in East Jerusalem for the viable Palestinian state. There were also notable instances of breaking ranks with the global south to vote in favour of Israel. In 2019, in an unprecedented move, India voted in favour of Israel in UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to deny observer status to Shahed, a Palestinian human rights organisation. In October 2023, India abstained from voting for a UNGA resolution demanding a ceasefire in Gaza and in April 2024, India abstained from a HRC resolution calling for a ceasefire and an arms embargo on Israel.
Beyond diplomacy, the trajectory of trade relations between India and Israel has meant that India is now the largest purchaser of Israeli weapons in the world. After the 26/11 terror attacks in Mumbai, India invested heavily in surveillance technology, much of which came from Israel. Excluding defence, merchandise trade between the countries stood at $10.77 billion by FY 2023.
Rising Hindu nationalism together with a fundamental shift in the decolonisation discourse in India has meant that the once reliable public support for the Palestinian cause has shrunk dramatically. Online, India has become known as a vocal hotbed of support for the most brutal aspects of the genocide in Gaza. In this atmosphere, it is unlikely that the current Indian government will move in any other direction on Palestine in the near future.
Reconnecting territory and human rights
Israeli actions since October 7 and unconditional American diplomatic and financial support for these actions mean that for the Israeli public as well as their more honest Western supporters, the two-state solution is dead. Israelis increasingly feel that they no longer need the fig leaf of the two-state solution to maintain their presence in the oPt and expect American support for a period of more naked annexation. This is evident from their recent incursions into Lebanon and Syria, as well as their reported aim to retain a military presence in Gaza.
For the rest of the world, the Gaza genocide reframes the Palestinian question. When we take the fantasy of a negotiated two state solution off the table, we are forced to confront reality. There is one single power occupying the entire territory of mandatory Palestine, and that occupying power – Israel – is currently practising apartheid and committing genocide in Gaza against the Palestinian people. The choices for the rest of the world (including India) are now clear – they can either choose to turn a blind eye to genocide and apartheid or they can act to stop it.
In the Global South, there is already an emerging consensus on the need to shift away from the rhetoric of Oslo and return to a more principled approach, centring the human rights of the Palestinian people. India was once at the forefront of this thinking. In November 1975, India voted for UNGA resolution 3379 that termed Zionism a form of racism and racial discrimination. The campaign which culminated in this resolution was part of a carefully structured effort led by the Organisation of African Unity and the Non-aligned countries (reflected in the Lima Programme). This is no longer the case. In 2022, India abstained from the UNGA resolution referring the question of Israeli policies in the oPt to the ICJ for an advisory opinion. In July 2024, when the ICJ ruled that Israeli policies in the oPt amounted to apartheid and racial segregation, India abstained from the resolution demanding the implementation of the ICJ ruling within a year.
Also read: Palestine Diary: Where the Gaza Genocide Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg
While certain Opposition politicians in India have, particularly in the aftermath of the Gaza genocide, sought to distinguish themselves from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Palestine, their solidarity remains grounded in the same Oslo two-state framework of negotiations. With the exception of Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan who termed Israel a “settler colonial regime,” most others have continued with a rhetoric of studied neutrality perfected in the later Congress years.
This is no longer a real alternative. To craft a meaningful alternative diplomacy on Palestine, the Opposition will have to step away from the transactional diplomacy of the last three decades and reconnect Palestinian self determination with the rights of the Palestinian people. In this, they may find inspiration in the first four decades of Indian policy on Palestine.
Sarayu Pani is a lawyer by training and posts on X @sarayupani.
Missing Link is her new column on the social aspects of the events that move India.
