New Delhi:

Israel wants peace in the region but is not ready to be attacked by Iran directly or indirectly, the country’s Ambassador to India, Reuven Azar, has said. 

Speaking exclusively to NDTV on Saturday, Mr Azar said this was one of the signals that his country wanted to send with its strikes on Iran earlier in the day and the other message is that it has the capability to hit many more targets in Iran if Tehran chooses to escalate. 

“What Israel did is a very precise strike that took out Iran’s air defence systems, and targeted military installations connected to their missile and drone programmes. The signal here is very clear: Israel will not agree to continue to be attacked by Iran either directly or indirectly,” the ambassador said, hinting at Iran’s proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah, with which Israel is already engaged in conflicts. 

Iran had earlier launched 200 ballistic missiles at Israeli targets on October 1.

Claiming that Iran is now exposed, Mr Azar said Israel is not worried about comments from the regime in Tehran warning of a “proportionate reaction” to the Israeli strike.

“We are ready for it. We are completely coordinating with our allies, especially the United States, which is completely backing our moves. It is very clear that Israel could have done much more to inflict damage on Iran but it chose to limit its response out of responsibility because we want to stay focused on this operation that the Israeli cabinet has determined – to completely eradicate the military capabilities of Hamas, to bring back our hostages and make sure Hamas doesn’t rearm,” the ambassador said.

In the north, where Israel shares a border with Lebanon, the ambassador said that the objective is to resettle Israeli communities in the areas from which they were evacuated because of attacks from Hezbollah.

“We are operating there as well, we have uprooted the military infrastructure that Hezbollah has created there for decades. And we will not agree that Iran will try to intervene in that and attack Israel. If they continue doing that, Israel will feel free to act in a much more decisive manner,” he warned.

‘Will Pay The Price’

To a question on whether Israel is locked in a never-ending war, Mr Azar said while that may seem to be the case, his country is defending itself and has created a situation in which Hamas can no longer attack it with missiles and the leadership of Hezbollah has been eliminated – and it is now for Iran to “accept the new reality”.

“If they don’t accept the new reality and come to the table to create a more stable situation in our region, they will pay the price,” he said. 

The ambassador said routes of diplomacy are always available and insisted that Israel did not start the war, which began after the October 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas. 

“We want to restore peace in our region. We are prepared for diplomacy, but it has to lay on the foundation of the understanding of the other side that Israel will be relentless. We will not rest until we are sure that assurances for our security are met and we will maintain the right to self-defence against any aggression in the future,” he said.

‘Downplaying Is Good’

On Iran claiming that the Israeli attack caused limited damage and its defence systems worked, Mr Azar said he was happy that Tehran was “downplaying” it because it could be a sign that it was not interested in continuing the aggression.

“Anybody that knows something about military capabilities knows that the S-300 (air defence system) that the Iranians have is not capable of stopping the F-35s and the F-16s of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and not capable of stopping our pilots from hitting any targets they want. So they can continue saying what they want but the situation is very clear and the message has been conveyed in a very clear way,” he said.   

New Delhi:

Israel has a right and duty to retaliate after Iran fired at least 180 missiles at it on October 1, the country’s Ambassador to India, Reuven Azar, has said. 

In an interview during the NDTV World Summit on Monday, Mr Azar said Israel is keen on peace and stability in the region but it cannot have a situation where Iran is free to attack whenever it likes. 

Mr Azar also said that, as a rising power, India has a substantial role to play in the Middle East and its importance will only increase every year. 

Asked about reports stating that Israel could respond to the Iranian attack before elections are held in the US – which is its most important ally –  on November 5, the ambassador said, “The US elections are not a factor. What is a factor is that we have not only a right but a duty to retaliate. Imagine a situation in which a country like Iran is capable of threatening any country in the region without any repercussions… this is completely unacceptable.”

Mr Azar said Israel wants to promote stability in the region and it is doing that with its peace agreements with Jordan and Egypt, the Abraham Accords with the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan, and dialogue with Saudi Arabia. 

“We have proved after the attack by Iran that we are capable of defending the skies of the Middle East from the Iranian threat, but we cannot be in a situation in which the Iranians feel free to attack us at any point. This is why the security building block has to be complemented by our retaliation,” he said. 

‘Neutralised Missile Threat’

On the killing of leaders like Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar and the fact that the outfit has regrouped in the past, Mr Azar said the situation is very different now. 

“What we have managed to achieve in the Gaza Strip right now is that we have defeated the terrorist army of Hamas in a way that they cannot pose a missile threat to Israel. We have destroyed their missile factories. We have sealed the border between the Gaza Strip and the Sinai, so it will be much more difficult to re-arm,” he said.

The ambassador admitted that they have not been able to bring back all the hostages from the October 7, 2023, attack and remove Hamas from government. The latter, he said, is being worked on by finding a way to distribute assistance to the population in Gaza so that Hamas cannot hold them hostage.

The balance, the ambassador claimed, is changing in Israel’s favour in its conflicts with Hamas and Hezbollah. 

Indian Century

Asked about India’s role in West Asia and in ending the conflicts, Mr Azar said the country will contribute a lot to the region and the world.

“India is a rising power. I was looking at the data and I saw that in the next year, when India grows by seven per cent, it will grow by $260 billion… our (Israel’s) economy is $600 billion. So what India has to contribute to the world is huge. It is going to be a powerhouse, a manufacturing hub, and it needs to be connected to the world. It has a lot to offer to countries in West Asia. I have seen how India is increasing its links with the UAE,” he noted.

The envoy added, “When all this infrastructure of connectivity is set, we are going to see an incredible role of India in our region. It won’t be just about merchandise, it will be about manufacturing… We depend on the goodwill of India, on the investments of India, on our cooperation with India and that role is going to increase every year.”

With the death of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, will Israel end operations on Lebanon- and agree to a ceasefire now?

The operations in Lebanon will end when the 70,000 Israeli residents of our communities in northern Israel will be able to return safely to their homes free from the threat of Hezbollah terrorists. 

So the war will continue?

We have done what we had to, as a result of the fact that our army wasn’t big enough, and we could not simultaneously deal both with the Gaza strip and Lebanon. In the last year, we had to evacuate about 70,000 residents from the North (Israel-Lebanon border areas) because our defence systems, the Iron Dome and others could not defend border areas from direct fire and tank missiles. So, now that we have the attention span and the capability, we are now trying to implement UN Security Council Resolution 1701, that says very clearly that Hezbollah forces are not allowed South of the Litani River. 

We have opened with a series of attacks against Hezbollah, and we are going to continue escalating and putting pressure until they agree to the international consensus reached. We’ve been calling the people of South Lebanon to leave their houses as soon as possible, especially in those areas and those towns in which Hezbollah has embedded missiles inside homes. 

Israel is willing to go and bomb them because they have missiles buried. Now that Lebanon is part of this war, would Qatar be a part of the war, as Hamas leaders live there? 

Qatar is not attacking us with missiles. We are not an irrational country, we are a democracy, we only use force that is needed in order to prevent attacks against us or retaliate when we are being attacked. So countries that are not attacking us should not be concerned. 

Nearly a year after the October 7 terror attacks, how close is Israel to achieving the goals it set out at the beginning: to eliminate Hamas, bring back the hostages, and ensure that Gaza cannot be a threat… and is there a timeline to the ceasefire which India has been calling for?

We have managed to remove the majority of military capability that Hamas had before the war. I’m talking about the capability to threaten Israel with thousands of rockets daily. We have cut their supply chains becausewe are sitting at the border with Sinai (Egypt). In addition to that, there were a lot of strategic tunnels, including attack tunnels and we’ve destroyed most of that. They are continuing to operate in a more sporadic way, attacking our forces, but unable to attack our border, unable to attack our villages. 

As to the hostages, we’ve managed to bring back about 150. Mostly, as a part of the ceasefire deal (in December 2023) with Hamas and there were also some 25 that we managed to bring with IDF operations. But unfortunately, we still have 101 hostages in the hands of Hamas that we haven’t been managing to release. Our dilemma is the fact that we want to destroy Hamas, but we also want to bring back our hostages. 

According to figures accepted by the UN, 40,000 people are dead, 15,000 children amongst them, 100 hostages, as you said, still remain in custody…is the human cost acceptable to Israel ?

The human cost is absolutely tragic. It’s really something that we didn’t want to do. And if you ask any Israel in the last 15 years, the last thing Israel wanted to do is to have to go back to Gaza after we left it in 2005 and this is actually one of the reasons that we were surprised on October 7. As far as the figures are concerned, we believe that they include people that died of natural causes. From their point of view, we have killed 40,000 civilians and no terrorists were killed, which is ridiculous. We have killed at least 15,000 Hamas and other terrorists, and about 5,000 civilians have died by misfired Hamas rockets, according to our estimates.

Now the reason that civilians were killed were as a result of the Hamas tactics. They were breaking any rule, any norm of humanity, operating from within hospitals, from within schools, from within civilian areas. We are taking a lot of precautions and working according to protocols, including hundreds of lawyers that sit in on every war and assist the military to decide when to strike and when not to strike. 

If that is true, then why is the world asking Israel to stop? Why is India, the UN calling for a ceasefire?

The UN system is problematic, as it has a majority of countries that are hostile to Israel and they appoint people who are biased. It is a natural tendency of countries to try to promote a ceasefire, because they are concerned, and they have interests that they want to promote. But at the end of the day, when you look at the real situation on the ground, the powers that be, the United States, the West, India and other countries, understand that we have a right of self-defence. 

There’s also the geopolitical cost for Israel: the Abraham accords have been put on hold, Countries like Ireland, Spain, Norway have now recognized Palestine. Plans like I2U2, YouTube and IMEC have gone into cold storage.

The underlying issue here is that despite this setback created by the war, the cooperation between Israel and its neighbours is increasing in the military and intelligence sphere, and for the first time in the history of the Middle East, the United States, Israel and moderate, pragmatic Arab countries have cooperated militarily to cope with the threat of Iran [when it sent missiles to Israel this year]. And there are some countries that are very short sighted, like the countries you mentioned, Spain, Ireland, etc, because apparently they don’t understand that. 

They are recognising Palestine. India recognises Palestine.

But that was in another era. We think that in the current context, recognising Palestine in the context of the attacks of October 7th would actually send a message to the terrorists that they can continue doing this.

India abstained on a UNGA resolution last week that would have pushed for sanctions against Israel. Did you discuss the vote with your Indian counterparts? 

We always have discussions, especially with our friends, and we are happy that India didn’t support this resolution. 

However, India has voted against Israel on other resolutions in the past year. When Prime Minister Modi met with President Abbas last week he promised unwavering support to the people of Palestine, support for a two state solution, which your Knesset has rejected. Do you feel India’s support over the last year to Israel has been strained by the continuing violence and the lack of a ceasefire?

Well all countries are concerned about the prolongation of the war, but the answer to your question is, no. I think that the only things strained in this year [between India and Israel] are our regional projects. We have to wait until this conflict is over, and then re-engage in the building of this regional projects with India.

India has also not banned Hamas, or designated it as a terror organisation and it has increased its funding of UNRWA- these all run counter to what Israel has asked for…

I hope that we’ll be able to convince the Indian government, as we’ve done with other governments like the US government, to stop funding UNRWA. On Hamas, I will just say that this may take time, we will continue presenting our information, and it’s going to be up to the sovereign government [in India] to decide its policy. 

A year since IMEEC was launched, the participating countries haven’t been able to meet because of the conflict- has IMEEC been shelved?

The vision of IMEEC continues to exist because of the very simple reason is that it makes sense, and it brings together a bunch of countries that are interested in creating connectivity. Israel began to speak about this vision since 2008.  The Middle East is now divided into two parts. You have the crescent of chaos- Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and then you have this arc of stability (including UAE, KSA and Jordan).

India has good relations with Iran and all the others you mentioned.

But the question is, when you have a geopolitical project that you want to build to connect Asia with Europe, are you going to do that with Iran, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq? 

India is already part of INSTC and Chabahar with Iran….

Well, good luck with that. Any sustainable project needs two prerequisites, security and political stability. If [India concludes that it] can trust the security and political stability of Iran, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, be my guest. We’re continuing our dialogue with the Indian government of the issue of IMEEC, and projects to create connectivity through this corridor. I’m sure that this will re-emerge once the war is over. 

Israel has also been discussing schemes to bring Indian workers to Israel, particularly as many Palestinian work permits have been cancelled. How many have already gone?

At the moment there are about 10,000 Indian workers as part of two schemes- one through an inter-governmental mechanism and one with the private sector. We also hope that Indian companies will come to build infrastructure projects like the Metro in Israel and bring in their own skilled labour. We are both old peoples, but young countries. Eventually, we are a growing country and we lack a lot of workforce, so we are capable of employing hundreds of 1000s of people, Palestinians, Indians, Chinese, Filipinos, etc. 

Regarding the work permits, we have the sovereign right to decide who we are going to allow into our country. We can, of course, you know, reemploy Palestinians when we have reached some stability.  

What about safety? Has Israel given a commitment to India that these workers will not work at the borders, will not work in Gaza, will not work on settlements. 

They are not going to work in places that are not safe- that is a commitment we have given.