US President Barak Obama was in Asia in April trying to demonstrate that his promised Asian strategic shift was at last real. Meanwhile, the Israelis were already secured in their strategic shift to Asia, writes Nicola Nasser

ISRAEL has carved economic inroads into Asia deep enough to have the traditional Asian political support for Arabs compromised. If this trend continues, the growing economic Israeli-Asian relations could in no time translate into political ties that would neutralise Asia in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s official visit to Japan from May 11 to 15 is not a historic breakthrough per se in bilateral relations that date back to 1952.
Neither is the normalisation of relations in ‘a matter of weeks’ between Israel and Turkey, which was the first major Muslim country to recognise the state of Israel in 1949, as promised by the Turkish premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan on April 27.
However, both events should highlight the historic breakthrough Israel has discreetly and quietly achieved in pivoting to Asia, once an Arab reservoir of support in their conflict with Israel over Palestine.
‘For the first time, in 2014, Israeli exports with Asia will exceed trade with the US, pushing it from second to third place [behind the European Union],’ director of the foreign trade administration at Israel’s economy ministry Ohad Cohen was quoted as saying by Israeli Globes on
April 27.
While opening more trade attaché offices in Asia, the economy ministry has closed a number of European trade offices in Austria, Hungary, Finland and Sweden ‘in order to refocus on emerging markets,’ Cohen explained.
‘Today we have five offices in China, three in India, and we have added attaché in Vietnam and an office in Manila,’ he added.
US President Barak Obama was in Asia in April trying to demonstrate that his promised Asian strategic shift was at last real. Meanwhile, the Israelis were already secured in their strategic shift to Asia.
While Obama was trying to forge a US-Asian counterbalance to China in what Chinese commentators described as ‘Cold War mentality’, Israel was courting the emerging Chinese economic superpower as well as India, which the World Bank on April 29 reported had overtaken Japan as the world’s third largest economy in terms of purchasing power parity.
‘”Pivot to Asia” is a term that might be applied to Israel,’ Roger Cohen wrote in The New York Times on April 24, citing a boom in its trade with China to more than $8 billion in 2013. Israel’s military and technological cooperation with China had once created a crisis in the US-Israeli relations.
Cohen noted that while the US and Europe continue to ‘huff and puff’ about the illegal Israeli colonial settlements in the occupied Palestinian West Bank ‘Asia does business. India has already bought sea-to-sea missiles, radar for a missile-intercept system and communications equipment from Israel.’

India: a case study
INDIA could be a case study of Israel’s historic breakthrough.
According to the website of the embassy of India in Cairo, Egypt, ‘Much of our external trade passes along the Suez Canal, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden,’ all almost exclusively Arab sea routes, and ‘Our total bilateral trade with the Arab countries is over US$ 110 billion and the region is home to 4.5 million Indians and caters to 70% of our energy imports.’
Indian defence minister AK Antony told the 15th Asian Security Conference in February last year that ‘West Asia is a critical region’ for India and the ‘Gulf region is vital for India’s energy security.’
During 2011 to 2012, India’s trade with the Arab Gulf Cooperation Council was more than $145 billion (with exports and imports from the region standing at 20 per cent and 14 per cent, respectively), Antony said.
India’s ‘link’ with West Asia has ‘deepened and further strengthened in the era of globalisation’. Chinmaya R Gharikhan, a former special envoy of the Indian prime minister to West Pakistan, is on record to have attributed the Indian economy growth at more than 8 per cent to India’s ‘dependence’ for 70 per cent of its energy needs on West Asia.
Talmiz Ahmad, a former Indian ambassador to Oman, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, on December 29 wrote in the Deccan Chronicle: ‘The security and stability of the Gulf and West Asia are crucial for the long-term interests of the Asian countries. This calls for a review of the Asian security role in the Gulf.’
Yet, despite these vital Indian-Arab relations, India is now the largest customer of military equipment, the largest military partner and the largest Asian economic partner of Arabs’ arch enemy, Israel.
Such Indian and Chinese exchanges with Israel have neutralised Asian pro-Arab and pro-Palestinian influence or at least created a contradiction between Asia’s economic dealings and political speech.
They should have been at least postponed as an Asian prize for ending the Israeli military occupation of Arab lands in Palestine, Syria and Lebanon.
Until peace is made with Arabs and Palestinians in particular, Israel will continue to be the main destabilising factor in the region.
Even then, it will continue to consider itself an integral part of western culture and strategy and to be a western influence doing its best to make the region a free market for western interests and a strategic monopoly of western powers.
Adding to the US empowerment of the Hebrew state by bolstering its strategic power will only bolster a formidable obstacle to peace in the region.
Controversial explanation
WRITING in Forbes on May 14 last year, Jonathan Adelman, a professor at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver, and Asaf Romirowsky, acting executive director for Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, had a controversial explanation of Israel’s breakthrough in Asia:
Historically, ‘Asia largely lacks the anti-Semitism that was so prominent in Europe’ and ‘Israel was like most Asian states … a new state born after World War II after a struggle with a Western colonial power, in this case Great Britain,’ they said.
‘Geographically, Israel is in West Asia, only four hours by air from India and 11 hours by air from China.
‘Economically, Israel’s rapid transition from Third World power to First World “start-up nation” echoes the great transformation underway in such Asian countries as India, China and the Four Tigers.
‘Scientifically, Israel has emerged as a high-tech superpower, thereby very attractive to Asian high tech powers.
‘Militarily, the Israeli military, a world leader in anti-missile technology (Iron Dome) … is attractive to Asian countries developing their own militaries.
‘Politically, the growing threat of Islamism draws many of Asian countries towards a country that is in the forefront of fighting this threat.’
In intelligence matters, Israeli ‘Mossad, with its strong human intelligence capabilities, is attractive for helping these countries overcome foreign threats.’
Adelman and Romirowsky sound like labouring to produce an academic commercial to ‘sell’ Israel to Asia.
Ironically, both of them had nothing to say about Israel being promoted mainly by its US strategic sponsor as ‘the only democracy in the Middle East.’
Historically, Israel was not born after a struggle with the colonial power of Great Britain but was imposed by this colonial power by force on the region and born after military ongoing ethnic cleansing of the native Arab Palestinians of the land.
Militarily, the anti-missile Iron Dome technology has not proved a success in three Israeli wars on Gaza Strip and Lebanon since 2006.
Politically, the Israeli logistical support of the most extreme among the Islamist insurgents who are fighting against the government of Syria doesn’t vindicate that Israel is ‘in the forefront of fighting’ their threat.

Taking the wrong side
THE argument that Mossad is attractive for helping Asian countries overcome their threat deserves more elaboration.
The fact that the Muslim population in Asia is almost double that of the Arab countries combined is a factor that could potentially create a cultural bridge for more interaction between the overwhelmingly Arab West Asia and its mother continent, but nonetheless there is a worrying negative side.
The rise of Islamist extremism could make use of this cultural bridge as well, but the Israeli occupying power is making the best use of it by exploiting this threat to cement its intelligence ties with Asia.
But these extremists are at war with the Arabs and not with Israel, which was so far safe from their threat not because of its defence capabilities against them, but because it was not and is still not targeted by them.
Of course, Asia could not idly watch the rise of Islamist extremism and could not avoid taking sides and embark on a defensive battle against it outside its borders; it will be risking fighting this evil within its own borders sooner or later.
However, Asia seems to have taken the wrong side. The Israeli occupying power is not Asia’s best ally to pre-empt this threat, but the Arabs who have gained enough intelligence about them and enough experience in fighting them from Morocco in the far west of the Arab world to Iraq in the far east.

Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Birzeit, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. An edited version of this article was first published by Middle East Eye.
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