India should also stand behind Palestinians. Shashi Tharoor, a top leader in the Congress party, said today that the terror organization does not represent Palestine.
Meanwhile, Congress has come under fire for its statement regarding the attack on Israel by Hamas.
He urged the nation to remember the Palestinian struggle.
“India has so far — judging by the Prime Minister’s Tweets — has taken a stand unambiguously on the side of Israelis who have been subjected to this unjust and inhumane attack by the Hamas. That’s fine as far as it goes. But it doesn’t go far enough because there is a broader picture that seems to be missing from the traditional Indian position,” Mr Tharoor said.
The reference was to India’s support for the Palestinian cause, which began under Jawaharlal Nehru and persisted under the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government.
The party’s highest decision-making body, the Congress Working Committee, expressed its “dismay and anguish” over the war in a statement today. However, it also emphasized the Palestinian people’s right to “land (and) self-government, and to live with dignity and respect”.
India should also stand behind Palestinians, says Shashi Tharoor.
The statement came under BJP attack, with the party accusing the Congress of supporting terrorism and being a “hostage to minority vote bank politics”.
“Congress’s CWC resolution on the Israel war is a classic example of how Indian foreign policy was hostage to Congress’s minority vote bank politics, until Modi happened,” said BJP MP Tejasvi Surya.
Since Nehru disapproved of the creation of a new country based on religion after witnessing the horrors of partition, India did not support the creation of Israel until 1950, two years after the Jewish state was established. Following the partition, there was also worry about Muslim sensitivities in the country.
But as its ties to the US grew, India’s position started to gradually shift. The first Indian prime minister to visit Israel was Prime Minister Narendra Modi in February 2018.
However, Mr. Tharoor stated today that both Israelis and Palestinians have the right to coexist in peace.
“There is a broader policy which should have been affirmed which is that of equal rights of both Israelis and Palestinians to live in peace, security and dignity behind safe borders,” Mr Tharoor said.
The Palestinian side, particularly the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) headquartered in Ramallah, has kept its end of the bargain for the majority of the time since the peace initiatives a century ago, and it is the Israeli side that hasn’t, Mr Tharoor added, referring to the Israeli occupation and “dehumanizing activities.”
