With nearly 10 million Indians living in the Gulf, an economy extremely sensitive to oil prices, and rapidly growing trade and investment relations, India needs to contribute its bit towards averting the drift to calamity in the region.
A year after the terror attack on Israel by Hamas, followed by the brutal reprisal in Gaza by Tel Aviv, the expansion of Israel’s military campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the war of missiles between Israel and Iran have brought the Middle East to the brink of a regional war with deadly consequences for the entire world. Even by the traditional standards of violence in the Middle East, the costs of the current cycle of conflict have been immense. If the terror attack by Hamas on October 7 last year took the lives of more than 1,200 Israelis, Tel Aviv’s disproportionate response has already seen the death of more than 40,000 people in Gaza, 1,00,000 injured and about two million Palestinians displaced from their homes and living in conditions of abject misery. The death toll has begun to mount in Lebanon, where Israel’s ongoing ground invasion to decimate Hezbollah is turning the country into an uninhabitable zone like Gaza. All this could be overshadowed by the scale of potential regional carnage if Israel and the Islamic Republic stand by their declared intent to destroy the other in the next phase of the war.
In a region riven with centuries-old grievances and a modern history of extreme violence rooted in religious, ethnic, territorial and nationalist resentments, it is pointless to focus on “who started it?”. The quest for regional domination in the name of Islam by the clerical regime in Tehran, and Tel Aviv’s refusal to accommodate the aspirations of the Palestinian people in its uncompromising pursuit of absolute security, have left little room for common sense to prevail. Meanwhile, the growing salience of ideological extremism in Tehran and Tel Aviv has only reinforced the temptations for an all-out war. The US, the only country with the political influence to promote a ceasefire, has struggled to persuade Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to silence his guns and create some room for diplomacy. If President Joe Biden’s call for restraint has fallen on deaf ears in Tel Aviv, the Republican candidate and former president, Donald Trump, is egging Israel on to embark on a massive confrontation with Iran. With the US elections less than a month away, Washington has become a pitiful spectator.
As the Middle East stares at a great war, India’s stakes in the region have never been as large as they are today. With nearly 10 million Indians living in the Gulf, an economy extremely sensitive to oil prices, and rapidly growing trade and investment relations, India needs to contribute its bit towards averting the drift to calamity in the region. Until now, India has been reluctant to call out the dangerous policies of Iran and Israel that are driving the current tragedy in the Middle East. But silence is no longer an option. While pressing Tehran and Tel Aviv to walk back from the abyss, Delhi must join hands with India’s most important partners in the region — the moderate Arab states including Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — to help calm things down and create pathways for regional stability and peace.
© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
First uploaded on: 07-10-2024 at 00:30 IST
