President Pranab Mukherjee on Tuesday waded right into the raging Israel-Palestine political storm that in the past fortnight has claimed the lives of over a dozen innocent civilians from the two sides. Faced with angry protesting students at the Al Quds University the Indian President had to cut short his programme that included inaugurating a boy's high school in the campus and leave.
The protesting students who were joined by members of the Palestinian Communist Party shouted slogans against the Israeli government as well as the Palestinian Authority for its failure to prevent the killing of innocent Palestinians and demanded India cut off all relations with the " Zionist" regime of Benyamin Netanyahu.
Earilier, the Israeli authorities after dragging their feet for days, had finally released the batch of computers that President Pranab Mukherjee was to gift to Palestinian students. The 30 computers were released on October 12, a day before President Mukherjee was scheduled to donate them to the Palestinian school.
For nearly a fortnight Tel Aviv's decision to hold back the computers at its port was threatening to become a diplomatic issue with Delhi. Indian officials, initially surprised and later, getting exceedingly miffed with the Israeli decision, made it clear that unless the computers are cleared it could cast a very dark shadow over the President's first ever visit to West Asia, including his maiden trip to Israel as head of the Indian State. Realizing the full import of what dragging its feet would mean to the President's visit, the computers were finally released.
On Tuesday afternoon they were gifted to the Palestinian students while the Indian President inaugurated a ITC Centre at Abu Dees under the Al Quds University, on the fringes of Jerusalem city. Later, President Mukherjee was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University.
The computers, which reflected India's traditional commitment to support Palestinian efforts at capacity building and education—despite the hardship that it faces—became an extremely important symbol of the two countries historic, warm ties.
"My visit reflects the keen interest of India in further deepening the rich and historic relationship that we have with Palestine," the President said at Al Quds.
"India's solidarity with the Palestinian people and its principled support to the Palestinian cause is rooted in our own freedom struggle. Over the years our approach to Palestine crystallized into a policy with three core dimensions: solidarity with the Palestinian people, support to the Palestinian cause and support to Palestine's nation building and capacity building efforts," said the President.
He added, " The entire Indian political leadership remains steadfastly committed to these policies."
Since arriving in Palestine on Monday, the Indian President held wide-ranging discussions with his Palestinian counterpart, Mahmoud Abbas and other senior members of the Palestinian Authority. The lack of progress in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, the recent spurt of violence in Jerusalem and future areas of cooperation between India and Palestine were the focus of these discussions.
However, the students protest in Al Quds forced the President to leave without inaugurating the Jawaharlal Nehru Boy's High School. Holding placards blaming the Israeli authorities for the recent killings, including the death of four students of the Al Quds University, the students demanded that the international community and India, boycott the Zionist government of Israel.
The students said they had timed the protest to mark the Indian President's presence at the campus to ensure the international community took note of the "butchery" of the Palestinians by the Israelis and take urgent preventive steps.
Later on Tuesday, President Mukherjee arrived in Jerusalem and began his engagement with the Israeli leadership. Though in the past decades Israel has become an extremely important ally of India—a relation that is likely to grow further in the coming days, the Indian President for the past days had been making it clear that this improvement was not at the expense of Delhi's traditional Arab allies, especially the Palestinians.
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Pranay Sharma in Jerusalem.
