No, India Is Not Israel, And Pak Is Not Palestine

NDTV

a day ago

In the immediate aftermath of the April 2022 Pahalgam terror attack - where Indian civilians were targeted in a region long destabilised by cross-border militancy - an old but deeply flawed analogy began circulating with renewed vigour: that India is becoming Israel, with Pakistan being touted as the new 'Palestine'. This comparison, invoked by a range of commentators from populist influencers to academic quarters, attempts to overlay the Middle Eastern fault lines onto South Asia. However, while superficially tempting, this analogy is strategically misleading, historically untrue, and morally hazardous.
At its core, the Israel-Palestine conflict is a struggle between a militarily dominant state and a stateless people living under occupation. It is defined by asymmetric power, a denial of sovereignty, and ongoing territorial annexation. India and Pakistan, by contrast, are both fully sovereign states that emerged from a negotiated partition of British India in 1947, each with their own internationally recognised borders and UN memberships. The bilateral conflict, especially over Kashmir, stems not from a denial of statehood but from unresolved territorial claims. Pakistan's continued insistence on linking Kashmir to Palestine flattens these distinctions and obfuscates the history of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism across Indian territory - from Punjab and Jammu & Kashmir to episodic destabilisation in India's Northeast.
Equating Pakistani actions with Palestinian resistance also undermines the moral and strategic integrity of the Palestinian cause. It erases the fact that, unlike Palestinians under occupation, Pakistan has used its sovereign apparatus to sponsor and shelter groups involved in acts of terror. This deliberate state complicity - acknowledged even by global institutions - makes Pakistan an aggressor, not an aggrieved actor.
Minorities, Democracy, and Statehood
One of the more dangerous simplifications of the analogy lies in the misrepresentation of internal minority politics in both regions. It is true that India is facing criticism over recent communal tensions, polarised discourse, and policies perceived as marginalising Muslims. However, equating that with the condition of Palestinians under occupation ignores the difference between a flawed democracy and an apartheid state structure.
In India, Muslims remain an electorally significant, constitutionally recognised group whose cultural, linguistic, and religious institutions are protected under law. Their political presence - though under strain - remains visible. From Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, the country's first Education Minister, to Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, one of India's most beloved Presidents, the leadership and legacy of Indian Muslims is historically well-anchored. In contemporary times, figures like Asaduddin Owaisi, a staunch government critic, and Salman Khurshid, a senior Congress leader with no constitutional post, were both part of an all-party delegation sent abroad to brief international counterparts in the aftermath of Operation Sindoor. Their inclusion, despite being politically oppositional, signals a rare bipartisan consensus on matters of national security.
Contrast this with Pakistan, where Ahmadiyyas are constitutionally barred from calling themselves Muslims, and Shias are frequently targeted in sectarian violence. The state's own structures are often complicit in marginalising non-Sunni groups, with blasphemy laws regularly weaponised against minorities. These are not merely social biases but systemic exclusions - legally and politically embedded.
Meanwhile, in Palestine, the question is not one of minority rights within a sovereign state but of basic human existence under foreign occupation. Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza live without freedom of movement, due legal process, or political autonomy. Lumping these distinct contexts together does violence to the nuance required to address each problem on its own terms.
Terrorism, Occupation, and Policy
India's security doctrine has consistently emphasised that its conflict is not with the people of Pakistan but with its military-intelligence apparatus and its use of terrorism as statecraft. From the insurgency in Kashmir and the Khalistani separatist movement in Punjab to arms flowing into the Northeast in the 1980s and 1990s, India's internal challenges have often traced back to external sponsorship. These were not acts of a stateless community demanding dignity but the result of a neighbour using irregular war to destabilise a regional adversary.
Israel, by contrast, has often responded to Palestinian armed resistance with disproportionate force - demolishing homes, bombing refugee camps, and applying collective punishment policies. These actions have generated global concern about human rights violations, and rightly so. However, attempts to map these punitive actions onto India's counter-terror operations obscure the scale, nature, and intent of both countries' military strategies.
What makes the analogy particularly hollow is India's long-standing commitment to the Palestinian cause. Even under the Modi government, which has expanded strategic ties with Israel, India has repeatedly reaffirmed its support for a two-state solution and spoken against occupation at UN fora. Far from mimicking Israeli policy, India has walked a diplomatic tightrope - deepening bilateral defence relations with Israel while maintaining principled solidarity with Palestine.
Conflating these divergent positions is not only analytically lazy but diplomatically counterproductive. It risks damaging India's credibility in the Global South, especially at a time when New Delhi seeks to position itself as a mediator and developmental partner in multilateral spaces. More importantly, it insults the Palestinian struggle by associating it with Pakistan's agenda of using terrorism and religious nationalism as tools of foreign policy.
Reject Lazy Analogies
Both the Israel-Palestine and India-Pakistan conflicts demand global attention. But attention should not mean abstraction. The occupation of Palestine is a human rights crisis rooted in land, displacement, and statelessness. The India-Pakistan dynamic, while also involving land and identity, is situated in a very different matrix: of two sovereign nations, one of which has routinely used terrorism to internationalise what is essentially a bilateral issue.
Sympathy for the Palestinian cause should not be hijacked to justify flawed analogies that exonerate state complicity in South Asia. Nor should India's legitimate counterterrorism operations be lumped with settler-colonial violence. Doing so only weakens both struggles - reducing history, diplomacy, and suffering to hashtags.
In times of polarisation, strategic clarity is not just a virtue, it is a necessity. India is not Israel. Pakistan is not Palestine. And equating them does justice to neither the complexity of history nor the urgency of peace.
(Ashraf Nehal is an author, analyst and columnist, who writes on South Asian geopolitics, climate action and world affairs. He was a former PM Young Writing Fellow)