New Delhi, July 4
Israel on Saturday thanked
India for not voting on an "anti-Israel bashing" UNHRC resolution, which
sources said was a result of Tel Aviv's sustained talks with the Indian
leadership over the past year.
Israeli envoy to India Daniel
Carmon tweeted his appreciation. "We appreciate votes by members of
@UN_HRC, including #India, who did not support yet another anti Israel
bashing resolution. We thank them."
On Friday, India abstained
on a United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) resolution condemning
Israel over a UN report into the alleged war crimes committed during the
2014 Gaza conflict - marking a significant change in India's stance.
But India also stated that "there is no change in New Delhi's long-standing position on support to the Palestinian cause".
Forty-one
of the 47 UNHRC council members voted in favour of the resolution,
including the eight sitting EU members: France, Germany, Britain,
Ireland, the Netherlands, Portugal, Latvia and Estonia.
Only the US voted against the resolution.
India, Kenya, Ethiopia, Paraguay and Macedonia abstained.
Israel
has been in touch with the leaders of the five countries that abstained
since last July, when India had voted against Israel in the UNHRC.
Officials
in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office have said that Netanyahu
had himself spoken with the leaders of India, Kenya and Ethiopia over
the past few days, Israeli media reported.
However, according to sources, Israel began the effort from last July itself.
Israel
feels the UNHRC vote on the violence in the Gaza Strip was
"politicized" and "unbalanced". According to Israel, the resolution does
not take into account the 5,000 rockets fired into its territory by
Hamas.
The upcoming UNHRC vote was also taken up by Israeli
Defence Minister Moshe Ya'alon when he visited India and held talks with
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj
and other officials.
"The UNHRC vote has been in discussions for a while with India," a source told IANS.
Israel
conveyed to India that it understands India's concerns about fighting
terror as it is also experiencing terrorism, and both are united on the
issue of combating the menace.
Iraeli daily Haaretz, reflecting
the appreciation of India's stand, said: "The fact that India abstained
reflects a significant policy change by Delhi; traditionally, India
voted in favour of all anti-Israel resolutions in UN institutions.
Friday's abstention was another sign of warming ties between India and
Israel since the election of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014."
Congress
MP Shashi Tharoor, who is also the chairman of the Parliamentary
Standing Committee on External Affairs, told IANS: "My understanding of
the MEA position is that it is our normal practice to abstain when a
resolution invokes the International Criminal Court (ICC), and that in
this case too, that was done.
"In other words, MEA says the
abstention had nothing to do with the merits of the resolution and does
not reflect a changed stand on the Israel-Palestine question.
Personally I will take MEA's word for it while stressing that India's
consistent and moral position on the substantive issue must not be
diluted. There is a national consensus on Palestine which I would urge
the government to continue to respect."
Ministry of external
affairs spokesperson Vikas Swarup on Friday said that India's reason for
abstention in the resolution A/HRC/29/L.35 was the reference to the
ICC.
"India is not a signatory to the Rome Statute establishing the ICC.
"In
the past also, whenever a Human Rights Council resolution made a direct
reference to the ICC, as happened in the Resolutions on Syria and North
Korea, our general approach had been to abstain."
"We have followed the same principle in our voting on today's Resolution," he said.
Prime
Minister Modi is to visit Israel this year -- in the first-ever prime
ministerial visit. Sushma Swaraj is also to visit Israel this year,
while Home Minister Rajnath Singh visited Tel Aviv earlier this year --
marking warming in bilateral ties.
An independent UN commission
of inquiry on Monday released its report on Operation 'Protective Edge',
finding evidence that both Israel and Hamas committed war crimes during
the war in the Gaza Strip last summer and calling the devastation
caused in the Palestinian territory "unprecedented".
The members
of the commission, which was appointed by the UNHRC, hinted in their
report that the upper levels of the Israeli political echelon were
responsible for the policies that led to some of the war crimes.
