Comment: If Gandhi were alive today...

When Israeli's premier, Ariel Sharon, currently visiting India, paid homage to India's Independence leader at the Rajghat mausoleum in Delhi, the late Mahatma Gandhi will most certainly have turned in his grave.

There are many reasons for this. Not only because of the visitor's controversial past record in Lebanon and his current cruel policy in Palestine, but also because the visit, the first by an Israeli prime minister since the creation of the Jewish State in 1948, marks a major shift in India's foreign policy as a whole.

The new chapter in India-Israel relations negates the long establishe principles of fighting against aggression and tyrannies and siding with the poor and oppressed laid down by India's founding fathers Gandhi and Nehru. These principles have identified India's foreign relations for more than half a century.

But the four-day visit during which a major deal to sell India a $1billion early warning airborne radar system is expected to be signed, also reveal how profoundly relations betweenb nations in South Asia -not just the Middle East - have changed.

The Phalcon deal itself was negotiated 18 months ago, but it has been blocked by the United States for fear of its impact on then newly strategic alliance with Pakistan's General Musharraf in its war in Afghanistan against Taliban and Al Qaida. Only last month, Washington lifted its objection to the sale.

Perhaps to allay Islamabad's concerns, the US is receiving a Pakistani defence delegation around the time of Sharon's visit to India to discuss, among other things, a Pakistani military purchase wish-list reportedly worth several billion dollars.

Ariel Sharon, who met his counterpart, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, brought three ministers with him and more than 30 senior executives. Many of the businessmen are from defence industries, confirming the growing importance of military co-operation between the two countries.

Apart from the early warning airborne system deal, known as Phalcon, there are other key issues to be discussed, including agriculture, counter-terrorism and the growing close links that India and Israel have with the United States.

This, according to some analysts would put the three countries on a roadmap to develop three-way axis between Washington, Delhi and Tel Aviv.

"What we see now is Israel conquering South Asia on an American horse," a European official told Gulf News. "With the ever increasing US military presence in Iraq, a large region which was denied to the Americans during the Cold War is now under the physical grip of the sole super power."

Indeed, many Israeli commentators see the recent development in terms of a triangular alliance. The liberal Ha'aretz goes further to argue that India's improved relationship with Washington has encouraged it "to think in terms of a triangular alliance in which India and Israel would act as cushions providing stability in the tumultuous South Asia-Middle East regions, areas that face threats posed by terror, and by dictatorial regimes of Arab, Muslim states".

In its struggle to control, or as the US Administration prefers to say to – "guide" the world, an Israel-India alliance would not be only of great benefit to Israel's struggling economy, but more significantly, it would bring Delhi to the American fold. In return, Delhi is expected, in the short term, to respond favourably to Washington's request to send troops to Iraq. Also, it would be interesting to watch India's voting pattern at the UN. This newly triangular relation is likely to encourage the White House to think in favour of India's candidacy for a permanent Security Council seat when the time comes.