Poised on the brink of electoral uncertainty, India defended Palestine’s rights last week with a shade more confidence than before. Yet, by making the future dependent on “direct and meaningful” negotiations with Israel, India’s ambassador to the United Nations, Ruchira Kamboj, fell into the trap of making peace and justice hostage to the Israelis, who are the problem in West Asia rather than the solution. But then, she must be loyal to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s fervent declaration that “the people of India firmly stand with Israel”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recalcitrance makes it clear that if a solution does emerge, it will be not because -- but in spite of -- Israel. Today’s fashionable phrase is again a “two-state solution” with secure borders for an independent Palestine as well as cast-iron guarantees of Israel’s security. True, this is the only realistic answer to the problem created by Zionist land-grabbing camouflaged in myth and mysticism.
But US secretary of state Antony Blinken is wrong to call Hamas (“human animals” for some Americans) and Iran its worst enemies. The real opponents are not Muslim terrorists but fanatical Jews who never stop reliving the Holocaust and seem determined to make Palestinians pay for Nazi sins. Mr Blinken was reminded that Mr Netanyahu presents formidable objections to the two-state solution when he calls the West Bank, where the bulk of Palestinian refugees live, “Judea and Samaria.