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This week, another remarkable chapter in India’s distinguished diplomatic record in the Middle East is being written by Narendra Modi. With considerable glitz and deftness, the Indian prime minister is hosting his counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu on a six-day trip to India that follows the Indian leader’s own July 2017 visit to Israel. This is one of the most heavily touted relationships on the global stage at the moment. As the august 100-year-old Tel Aviv-based newspaper Haaretz put it a couple of days ago, “As far as the bonhomie, bromance and public display of affection are concerned, Modi and Netanyahu deserve Academy Awards for their incredible performances. We are likely to see more such performances in the days to come.” The skill in Modi’s high wire act becomes most apparent when you zoom away from the personal embrace of Netanyahu to take in what else India is doing in the region. Just a few weeks ago, despite intense pressure from the USA’s Nikki Haley, it voted alongside the majority at the United Nations to strongly censure American president Donald Trump’s unilateral move to shift his country’s embassy to disputed Jerusalem. Within hours, the Palestinian ambassador to India confirmed that Narendra Modi would be visiting his country (the official Indian position is to refer to Palestine and not “the Palestinian Authority”) in 2018. This underlined the Indian minister for external affairs Sushma Swaraj’s statement in September that “for independent India, support for the Palestinian cause has been [an integral] reference point of its foreign policy.” This administration has also meticulously maintained India’s longstanding ties to Iran, which has fast emerged Netanyahu’s overwhelming foreign policy obsession. In 2016, prime minister Modi visited Tehran to sign a complicated raft of agreements with the Iranian leader Hassan Rouhani, including a crucial tripartite deal (along with Afghanistan) to develop the Chahabar Port that will allow India direct access to Central Asia. In a similar manner, India’s much-maligned (often with good reason) foreign policy establishment has cleverly managed to keep excellent relations with all the varied allies and opponents of the Arab world, including those forces lined up with Saudi Arabia, which is fast emerging as regional rival and counterpoint to Iran. While India has ancient ties with most of these countries, as well as diplomatic connections dating back to the immediate aftermath of decolonization after World War II, the official relationship with Israel turns only 25 this year. As Haaretz aptly summarized it, “India - Israel relations aren't clouded by sentimentality. Both the countries have always engaged with each other and formed diplomatic alliances based on their own self-interest - diplomatically terming it as 'politically independent decisions.' To pretend that India-Israel diplomatic engagement is symbolic of a "marriage made in heaven" is nothing but smooth-tongued flattery. If at all it does constitutes a ‘marriage’, the only kind it points to would be an ‘open marriage.” The backbone of the relationship is the arms trade. “India’s inability to build an efficient and robust indigenous defense manufacturing capability, partly due to its corrupt and dysfunctional bureaucracy, meant that it continued to be the world’s largest arms importer…almost 40 percent of India’s weapons are either obsolete or obsolescent. Given this, New Delhi has a desperate need to upgrade India’s weapons. This makes India a wonderfully lucrative market for Israel. Nearly half of Israel’s arms exports end up in India…If a Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry study, predicting the Government of India is likely to spend $620 billion in buying weapons between 2014 and 2022, turns out to be true, Israel, with a major chunk of the pie, would indeed strike gold.” Here, it should be noted that Netanyahu is managing a similarly impressive diplomatic dance in India’s neighborhood, even as Modi keeps his country in all of the Middle Eastern countries good books. Israel’s biggest trading partner in Asia – by far – is actually China. Before the Israeli prime minister referred to the connection with his Indian counterpart as “a marriage made in heaven” he’d used that exact same phrase when meeting the Chinese premier Xi Jinping, further exhorting his new friend to “assume his rightful place on the world stage” claiming for himself the status of “perfect junior partner.” These are not comments that align with India’s interests, nor the Israeli’s wholehearted embrace of the problematic 'One Belt One Road’ plan by China to spend hundreds of billions of dollars and cement itself at the centre of the world’s trading routes of the future.