Apartheid-Israel and India, Using Similar Tactics in the Occupied Territories

By Sajjad Shaukat

A senior reporter for Middle East Eye Azad Essa who also worked for Al Jazeera is author of the book “Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance Between India and Israel”, published in February 2023 wrote on October 11, this year in an article: “Over the past decade, India and Israel have grown increasingly closer as partners and allies…Ties have blossomed under [Indian] Prime Minister’s Narendra Modi and [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu, with India and Israel using similar tactics in the occupied territories of Kashmir and the Palestinian territories…seizing lands, displacing people, criminalising dissent, muzzling journalists, and controlling people’s movements…Zionism and Hindutva [Hindu Nationalism] in controlling Palestine and Kashmir…whereas Israel wants to erase Palestinians, India has for decades, used assimilation as a tactic to control Kashmir. Now it is a lot more open to erasing Kashmiris”.

However, Palestine and Kashmir are two of the world’s most drawn-out and complex conflicts to date. They are multi-dimensional, focusing not only on a territorial epicenter but an ideological one as well. The similarities are striking as apartheid has also become main tactic of Israel and India, being used against the Palestinians and Kashmiris.

During the partition of the Sub-continent in 1947, the people of the state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) which comprised Muslim majority decided to join Pakistan. But, Dogra Raja, Sir Hari Singh, a Hindu who was ruling over the J&K in collusion with the Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Governor General Lord Mountbatten joined India.

The Radcliffe Boundary Award gave the Gurdaspur District—a majority Muslim area to India to provide a land route to the Indian forces to move into the J&K. Indian forces invaded Srinagar on October 27, 1947 and forcibly occupied the J&K in utter violation of the partition plan.

When Pakistan responded militarily, on December 31, 1947, India made an appeal to the UN Security Council to intervene and a ceasefire ultimately came into effect on January 01, 1949. The Security Council’s resolution 47 of April 21, 1948 promised a plebiscite under UN auspices to enable the people of Jammu and Kashmir to determine whether they wish to join Pakistan or India.

On February 5, 1964, India backed out of its commitment of holding plebiscite. Instead, Indian Parliament declared Kashmir-an integral part of the Indian union.

Since 1989, various forms of state terrorism have been part of a deliberate campaign by the Indian army and paramilitary forces against Muslim Kashmiris. It has been manifested in brutal tactics like crackdowns, curfews, illegal detentions, massacre, targeted killings, sieges, burning the houses, torture, disappearances, rape, breaking the legs, molestation of Muslim women and killing of persons through fake encounters.

On August 5, 2019, Indian prejudiced Prime Minister and leader of the BJP-led extremist government Modi abrogated articles 35A and 370 of the Constitution, which gave a special status to the disputed territory of the Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK). Indian government bifurcated Jammu and Kashmir into two union territories—Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh to be ruled by the federal government. On the same day, strict military lockdown was imposed in the IIOJK which continues unabated.

After imposing the military lockdown, the deployment of more than 900,000 military troops in the IIOJK, who have martyred tens of thousands of the Kashmiris, including women and children through brutal tactics-fake encounters, while closure of mosques, shortage of foods, medicines for the patients have further increased the plight of the Kashmiris.

In order to hide human rights violations, communication services have been cut off from the world and foreign journalists are not allowed to enter the Kashmir region.

While, under a well-planned hidden agenda, Modi-led regime has intensified, bringing ethno-demographic changes in the IIOJK on Israeli model. In this context, Indian various moves such as introduction of new laws, amendment of the laws to facilitate non-Kashmiris and outsiders in order to usurp the rights of the Muslim Kashmiris—issuance of domicile certificates to more than 800000 non-Kashmiris, registration of almost 2.5 million new non-local voters in the IIOJK—failure of fake drama to host G-20 summit on May 22-24, this year in the IIOJK might be cited as instance.

Modi-regime has also sent gangs of RSS-BJP volunteers permanently stationed in the occupied Kashmir.

Indian forces have been also availing various draconian laws such as Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), the Public Safety Act (PSA) etc. in martyring the Kashmiri people, and for arbitrarily arrest of any individual for an indefinite period.

Despite the use of chemical weapons—the pellet guns and phosphorus bombs by Indian military, Kashmiris have accelerated the war for liberation.

Meanwhile, human rights groups and leaders of various countries and UNO have repeatedly condemned Indian illegal measures and human rights abuses which keep on going in the IIOJK.

As regards Israel, during World War I, the Zionists pressured the British government to settle them in Palestine after the war. The Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917 was a conspiracy of the USA and the British rulers against the Palestinians, which was implemented on May 14, 1948 through the UNO—the 1947—UN Partition Plan established the state of Israel.

Israel had occupied the Gaza strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights since 1967. When Hamas came to power in 2006, having won the elections, Israel’s contact and cooperation with Gaza became very limited.

Nevertheless, after many attacks on Gaza in the past and recent years—Al-Aqsa mosques 2021 and this year’s assaults on the Palestinians, Hamas was forced to target Israel on October 7, 2023.

It is mentionable that about Israel, many authors, writers, officials and doctors have proved with evidence that from the very beginning Israel has used banned chemical weapons like phosphorous bombs in Lebanon in the 2006 war, and several times in Gaza. Now, again, the Israeli military has been using these fatal weapons in Gaza.

Nonetheless, in response to the unprecedented attack of the Palestinian group Hamas, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) launched an unprecedented multi-pronged assault on Gaza strip—one of its largest aerial bombardments to eliminate Hamas. So far, the IDF has dropped more than 25,000 bombs on Gaza.

Unmatched with Israeli heavy and modern weapons, freedom fighters of Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group had no option except firing rockets inside Israel.

Israel’s aerial raids in Gaza enclave have destroyed buildings, houses, refugees’ camps, mosques, schools, hospitals, and other buildings, killing tens thousands of civilians, including women (including pregnant women), children and journalists. Reports suggest that particularly more than 10000 children have been massacre by IDF bombardments.

Playing the same bloody game, Israeli forces also targeted multiple locations in the Occupied West Bank and murdered more than 5000 Palestinians, while arresting more than 3000 individuals—Jewish settlers have burnt their shops and cars.

And Tel Aviv has halted deliveries of basic necessities of life such as water, food and electricity to Gaza’s 2.3 million people and prevented entry of supplies from Egypt.

By setting side Israeli’s past and present state terrorism on the Palestinians, just a few hours after Hamas launched its assault on Israel on October 7, 2023, India’s Prime Minister Modi was among the first world leaders to respond, who in a strongly worded statement condemned it as the “terrorist attacks”, and said New Delhi “stands in solidarity with Israel at this difficult hour”.

While, Pakistan’s top leadership President Dr Arif Alvi, Caretaker Prime Minister Anwaarul Haq, including leaders of the political and religious parties  strongly condemned the massacre of Palestinians at the hands of Israel and urged both the world community and Muslim countries to take urgent action to stop the Zionist state and end the blockade of Gaza. They stressed that “resolving the Palestine issue according to the aspirations of its people is essential for peace in the Middle East”, and reiterated Pakistan’s support for “a two-state solution”.

Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff General Syed Asim Munir haz repeatedly condemned Israel for “unabated violence’ in Gaza…willful, indiscriminate killing of innocent civilians”, and urged “international community to mobilize to put an end to ‘human tragedy’ unfolding in Palestine”. He called for “opening of humanitarian corridor to Gaza…enduring resolution of the Palestinian issue and end to the unlawful occupation of their territories and Muslims’ sacred places”.

Notably, Caretaker Foreign Minister Jalil Abbas Jilani called Israel for “committing genocide against the people of Palestine” as atrocities in Gaza continue to rage on the current situation as a consequence of “seven decades of illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories”.

He elaborated: “We regret that despite the rising death toll, flagrant violations of international humanitarian law, war crimes and ethnic cleansing, the UN Security Council has failed to even for a ceasefire and put an end to the carnage in Gaza…Pakistan believes that durable peace in the Middle East will emerge from a two-state solution and the creation of a sovereign state of Palestine based on the pre-1967 borders, with Al-Quds Al-Sharif as its capital. Like the Palestinian people, the people of Jammu and Kashmir continue to wait for the UN Security Council to ensure the implementation of its own resolutions that recognize their right to self-determination. Rooted in the colonial past, the Jammu and Kashmir dispute like the Palestine question has been on the UN Security Council’s agenda for over seven decades.

Undoubtedly, the failure of the UN to enforce its decisions relating to Palestine and Kashmir has directly resulted in the instability of the Middle East (ME) and South Asia, leading inevitably to military conflicts in both regions.  There have been at least half dozen major military conflicts in the ME in the past 70 years.

In the IIOJK, the failure of the UN to provide self-determination for the people of Kashmir has led directly to two major wars between India and Pakistan.

It is no surprise, then, that the Palestinians and Kashmiris resist so fiercely the illegal occupations. And, according to international law, they have every right to oppose their foreign oppressors.

It is worth-mentioning that New Delhi is one of Tel Aviv’s biggest arms export clients, spending about $10bn over the past decade, a number of these weapons are deployed in the IIOJK. Indian police forces have been receiving training in Israel for so-called “anti-terror” operations, which Tel Aviv conducts against Palestinians.

Islamabad has maintained that there should be a total withdrawal of Israel from the occupied Arab territories, including Jerusalem and Indian occupational forces from IIOJK.

If any impartial observer studies the historical background of the Indian Occupied Kashmir and Israeli occupied territories of the Palestine—perennial wars of liberation, he will definitely conclude that acts of barbarism, employed by Indian troopers on the Kashmiris and those of Israel on the Palestinians to maintain their illegitimate occupation tantamount to alien rule. Therefore, both the countries are the real terrorists.

Sajjad Shaukat writes on international affairs and is author of the book: US vs Islamic Militants, Invisible Balance of Power: Dangerous Shift in International Relations

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