The plurilateral push

KP Nayar

Strategic analyst

Elazar Cohen is a name readers in India will not recognise. Not even practitioners of onomatology, despite his distinctly Jewish name. Long before the idea of an “international forum for economic cooperation” among India, Israel, the UAE and the US burst into headlines a week ago, Cohen has been working quietly on the ground to bring together three of these four countries — except the US — in a trilateral relationship.

If anyone is expecting that China will be a factor to be put down or competed against, they will be disappointed.

Cohen is the Commissioner General of the Israeli Pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai which opened for the global public on October 1. India is his neighbour: the Indian Pavilion is close to Israel’s and Cohen has benefited most from this than any of his counterparts from the 191 other countries taking part in the exposition.

Governments will take their time to give life and substance to ideas such as the new four-nation platform discussed last week during External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar’s visit to Israel. Besides, public discourse in India has a tendency to run away with bilateral and plurilateral ties, which Indians are comfortable with. Israel is one such. Headline-writers in India have already christened the new forum as the “Middle East Quad,” whereas the media and think tanks in the US, UAE and Israel have been more restrained in their enthusiasm about the quadrilateral foreign ministers’ meeting.

Indians constitute the biggest expatriate population, not only in the UAE, but also in all six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. They have been thronging the Indian Pavilion and are among the top out of the 7,71,477 ticketed visits from 181 countries in the first 18 days of the exposition. An Israeli outpost on this scale in an Arab country is a novelty for Indians and they have been visiting to see the activities which are under Cohen’s watch.

The majority of companies in Israel are small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and these have been hugely successful. Indian-owned enterprises in the UAE are almost entirely made up of SMEs. It is an ideal match for new business as Israel looks to penetrate Arab markets in a big away, one year after the historic Abraham Accords paved the way for formal Israeli diplomatic and economic presence in the Gulf and vice versa.

Indians have been doing business with the Gulf for centuries and they knew these markets long before the GCC countries attained formal, structured statehood in their present modern forms. Israel does not have that advantage: the Jewish state came into being just shy of 75 years, and for most of its existence has been boycotted by all member countries of the Arab League, including those in the Gulf. That is now in the past and Indians in the Gulf have the wherewithal to consummate the marriage solemnised in the White House by the Abraham Accords.

Prior to Jaishankar’s hybrid meetings — he and Israel’s foreign minister met in person while their counterparts from the UAE and the US were present virtually — last week, Indian decision-makers at various levels at the Centre and in the states have been working on advancing trilateral relations using the Cohen route, as it were. One impromptu visitor to the Israeli Pavilion was Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, president of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) and BJP member of the Rajya Sabha.

He was at the Indian Pavilion, where ICCR performers were entertaining a distinguished audience on its opening night. He noted Israel’s Pavilion nearby. The next day, he went back to the Expo Village and called on members of Cohen’s team. Now the ICCR and its Israeli counterparts are working on a mega cultural event to be presented jointly by their pavilions. The ICCR, which is associated with the entire cultural organising for India’s participation in the exposition, has been mobilising talent from within the UAE to add to its cultural content. Working with the Israelis, a trilateral cultural relationship will soon see fruition.

Taking the cue from stories cleverly planted by spin doctors in Tel Aviv, sections the Indian media have given credit for the idea of the new four-nation group which includes New Delhi, to Israel’s foreign minister, Yair Lapid. The truth is that in November last year, Jaishankar spoke about opportunities for India following the Accords.

During a visit to Abu Dhabi, Jaishankar told WAM, the official Emirates News Agency, that the rapprochement among Bahrain, Israel and the UAE would impact the entire world, not just the South Asian and Gulf region. “It will bring new economic combinations and create new logistical opportunities for the countries in the region and beyond,” he said. No one anticipated then that the international forum for economic cooperation, which came out of last week’s quadrilateral meeting, was what he had on his mind.

A senior Israeli diplomat in New Delhi has been quick to avow that the new forum is not meant to counter China. It was just as well. Supranationalists in India have a tendency to target China on anything and everything, whether it is in place or out of place. They build imaginary China shops whenever they sight a bull, as it were. The Israeli diplomat’s quick move to disabuse any idea that four nations, including her own, are ganging up against China also points to the challenges before any new economic forum of four countries which are very different from one another in every way.

The UAE, for instance, was one of the early countries to team up with China’s Huawei for its 5G networks. As a coastal state with critical commercial shipping and defensive maritime interests, Israel wants China to assist in its port development. So if anyone is expecting that China will be a factor to be put down or competed against, they will be disappointed.

An understated outcome of Jaishankar’s visit to Jerusalem has been Israel’s accession to the International Solar Alliance (ISA), which has its origins as a Franco-Indian initiative. The UAE is already active in the ISA. Both countries hope to do brisk business with India in this renewable energy source.

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