Since the U.S.–Israel war with Iran disrupted oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz, Gulf producers, including the UAE, have faced major logistical challenges in exporting oil.

Security Council members attend a meeting on maritime safety at U.N. headquarters in New York City, on April 27, 2026
| Photo Credit: Reuters

IMO Secretary-General Mr. Arsenio Dominguez to UN Security Council.
| Photo Credit: International Maritime Organization

U.S. President Donald Trump. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Rising geopolitical instability in West Asia is forcing a reassessment of how India’s macroeconomic strength is measured.

As of March 2026, this instability has translated into active macroeconomic stress. The rupee has depreciated to a record low of ₹95 per dollar, the Indian basket of crude oil hit $156.29 per barrel, and the Reserve Bank of India has deployed billions of dollars of foreign exchange reserves to contain volatility. In such conditions, strong quarterly GDP prints capture domestic activity but often overlook vulnerabilities linked to energy imports, shipping routes and fiscal buffers.

Against this backdrop, India enters the post-Budget season with a striking macroeconomic contradiction. Headline indicators remain robust: the State Bank of India expects Q3 FY26 GDP growth of about 8.1 percent, public capital expenditure is near 4 percent of GDP, and fiscal consolidation toward a 4.3 percent deficit by FY27 remains intact. At the same time, external buffers are weakening. Foreign exchange reserves have declined from recent highs to about $709.76 billion, while foreign portfolio outflows of over $8 billion following the onset of the conflict have intensified currency pressures.

Yet income dynamics are weaker. Real wages remain subdued, household liabilities have risen to roughly 41 percent of GDP, and private investment continues to lag the state’s capex-led expansion.

This divergence reflects a deeper shift in India’s fiscal architecture: revenue buoyancy is increasingly driven by transaction-linked taxation while expenditure tilts toward capital formation. In a stable global environment this model can sustain growth, but when energy markets become volatile, its durability depends on whether fiscal revenues, consumption and investment can withstand external commodity shocks.

Shifts in revenue structure

India’s revenue structure has been shifting in ways that matter more in a volatile global environment. Revenue receipts have risen from 8.5 percent of GDP in FY16–20 to about 9.1 percent in FY22–FY25 (PA), but the increase reflects recomposition rather than a broadening of income taxation. The Union Budget 2026–27 estimates gross tax revenue at ₹44.04 lakh crore, yet much of the buoyancy now comes from transaction-linked channels. GST collections reached ₹22.8 lakh crore in FY25, while levies on financial and cross-border transactions have also expanded.

Direct taxes typically expand when more workers move into stable paid employment. As a result, revenue growth increasingly depends on the volume of economic transactions rather than income deepening.

External shocks particularly energy price spikes that raise transport costs and compress household spending can quickly slow transactions. In such conditions, a fiscal model reliant on activity-linked taxation becomes more sensitive to geopolitical disruptions that ripple through consumption, trade and financial markets.

This vulnerability has been evident during past shocks. During the pandemic, widening gaps between projected and actual GST revenues forced the Union government to borrow over ₹2.69 lakh crore between 2020 and 2022 to compensate states for revenue shortfalls.

The effects of oil price surge

India’s fiscal system remains structurally exposed to oil price volatility. The country imports around 85–87 percent of its crude oil, making it directly vulnerable to external energy shocks a direct macroeconomic transmission channel.

Empirical estimates suggest that a $10 per barrel rise in crude prices can increase Consumer Price Index inflation by roughly 0.2 percentage points, widen the current account deficit by about $9–10 billion (around 0.4 percent of GDP) and reduce GDP growth by nearly 0.5 percentage points under partial pass-through conditions. Oil shocks also propagate through the fiscal system: higher energy costs raise fertiliser and LPG subsidy requirements, increase transport and logistics costs, and elevate inflation-linked expenditure.

Recent policy responses illustrate this transmission. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Indian crude basket surged from roughly $59 per barrel in 2019 to over $120 in mid-2022.

To contain inflation, the government reduced central excise duties on petrol and diesel by a cumulative ₹13 and ₹16 per litre between November 2021 and May 2022, resulting in an estimated ₹2.2 lakh crore revenue loss. At the same time, energy-linked subsidies expanded, with fertiliser support rising sharply and total energy subsidies touching nearly ₹3.2 lakh crore.

Amid the ongoing conflict in West Asia, estimates by ICRA suggest that if oil prices average around $100 per barrel, India’s current account deficit could widen from about 0.7-0.8 percent to nearly 1 percent of GDP, while government expenditure could rise by as much as ₹3.6 trillion due to higher subsidy and compensation requirements. This underscores how energy shocks translate simultaneously into external imbalances and fiscal stress.

When oil prices spike, governments typically absorb part of the shock through tax reductions and subsidy expansion, compressing fiscal space. In a system increasingly reliant on transaction-linked taxes, such shocks can simultaneously weaken consumption, reduce GST buoyancy and expand expenditure pressures, creating a direct fiscal squeeze.

Impact on households

Household balance sheets reveal a key channel through which energy volatility transmits into the domestic economy.

Private consumption accounts for roughly 61.4 percent of India’s GDP, yet household liabilities have risen sharply from about 36–37 percent of GDP in 2022 to over 41 percent by 2025, increasing sensitivity to inflationary shocks and suggesting that consumption is being sustained less by income growth and more through credit expansion.

Net financial savings have also become more volatile, falling to around 3–4 percent of GDP in recent quarters before recovering to about 7.6 percent, indicating a weakening of financial buffers.

The exposure is being amplified by the current shock, as disruptions to LPG supply chains — over 60 percent of which depend on imports — have translated into longer refill cycles and local shortages, raising household energy costs even as leverage remains elevated.

At the same time, India’s expenditure strategy has pivoted toward infrastructure-led growth. The Union Budget 2026–27 places effective capital expenditure at ₹17.15 lakh crore.

While such front-loaded investment strengthens long-term productive capacity, it compresses fiscal space for welfare stabilisers. Allocations for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act fell to ₹60,000 crore in 2023–24, 33 percent below the previous year’s revised estimate; by December 2022, States had already spent 117 percent of available funds, with ₹8,449 crore in pending liabilities.

In a low-wage environment, imported energy inflation compresses real incomes while debt servicing obligations remain fixed. Rising household leverage therefore becomes a macroeconomic vulnerability, especially when fiscal policy prioritises capital formation over income support and external shocks weaken consumption. Beyond households, geopolitical uncertainty is also shaping corporate investment and credit allocation.

Implications for industrial sector

India’s industrial upswing is increasingly concentrated in capital-intensive sectors aligned with public investment. Industrial output rose 7.8 percent in December 2025, with manufacturing expanding 8.1 percent year-on-year and 4.8 percent over April–December. High- and medium-technology industries now account for about 46 percent of manufacturing value added, according to the Economic Survey 2025-26.

By contrast, labour-intensive industries remain weak.

Private investment remains cautious despite rising project announcements.

CMIE (Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy) data shows private firms account for nearly 80 percent of new project announcements, yet only about 9 percent reached completion in 2022–23, suggesting a recovery that expands production capacity more than wage-linked income. Recent financial stability assessments show bank balance sheets are considerably stronger than a decade ago.

In a volatile global environment, this financial strength has translated into greater risk selectivity rather than broader credit expansion. 

The recent LPG crisis induced shortages of commercial cylinders have forced the closure of restaurants, cloud kitchens and small food businesses, with gig worker unions reporting a 50–60 percent decline in food delivery orders. Such shocks disproportionately affect labour-intensive and informal sectors, where incomes are directly tied to daily demand and lack institutional protection, even as capital-intensive sectors remain relatively insulated within the financial system.

As external pressures intensify, they raise a broader question of fiscal optionality: the state’s ability to absorb shocks without abandoning consolidation targets. With fiscal space tied to capital expenditure and revenues dependent on economic transactions, geopolitical disruptions can quickly narrow the room for counter-cyclical intervention. In such a context, India must rebalance toward income-led demand, more resilient revenue bases and greater energy diversification, or risk turning external shocks into a recurring source of fiscal stress.

(Deepanshu Mohan is professor and dean, O.P. Jindal Global University. He is a visiting professor at LSE and a visiting academic fellow at University of Oxford. Saksham Raj and Aditi Lazarus contributed to this column.)

File photo of China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian.
| Photo Credit: PTI

If talks go well, the death machines will fall silent in West Asia, or at least Gaza, on Sunday. The US and Qatar have reportedly brokered a deal between Israel and Hamas to end the war.

It’s been a long wait for the misery to end. The killings began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas fighters from Gaza attacked Israel on a Jewish holiday. They went about indiscriminately shooting and kidnapping unsuspecting civilians and some soldiers. The worst attack was on a music festival where hundreds of young Israelis were partying. All of it streamed live by the attackers’ body-mounted cameras. By the time Israeli forces took out the last gunmen, the body count had topped 1,200. Over 250 hostages were carried across to Gaza to be stashed away in a subterranean maze where they remained undiscovered even after the whole house was burnt down.

Perhaps the most dramatic and horrific cross-border assault on any country since the Mumbai terror attacks of 2008, it triggered such a display of overwhelming force that it left the world aghast. The shockwaves have left the regional map perceptibly different. It has riven apart communities and split institutions. The scars run so deep that they will not heal in a very long time. It has also laid bare the remarkable pragmatism bordering on chutzpah of the Arab nations.

Reduced To Rubble 

According to multiple reports, nearly 46,000 Gazans, a substantial number of them women and children, have perished in the 15-month war. Most of Gaza has been flattened and rendered uninhabitable. Israel is estimated to have demolished over 1,61,600 homes and damaged 1,94,000 other civil structures. More than 1.9 million of the 2.2 million Gazans have become refugees, most of them corralled into a tiny corner in the north of the Strip. More than 1,000 medical facilities have been destroyed; Rafah does not have a single hospital. The economic loss is estimated at $37 billion. 

Hamas was decapitated when its political leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran, where he had gone to attend the inauguration ceremony for Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. Its director of war, Yahya Sinwar, was killed in Gaza last year, just after the first anniversary of the Hamas attack. A video of a dying Sinwar defiantly throwing a piece of wood at an Israeli military drone indicated that Hamas would not back down despite the carnage. By the end of 2024, Israel had spent over $67 billion on war. It had cost the United States nearly $23 billion until September 2024. Yet, about a hundred Israelis remain hostages somewhere in the ruins, or, more likely, under the ground. 

The Deal

So, what is the new acceptable middle ground in the new deal that the failed talks since the first successful one in November of 2023 could not find? After all, the original objective of the war—freeing hostages—was not achieved. Not only that, Israel will release over 1,000 Palestinians, including those arrested after October 7 and presumably Hamas fighters, in a prisoner exchange. That means while thousands of innocent Gazans, including women and children, paid for the Hamas attack with their lives, its fighters may yet return, alive, prison-hardened, and ready to fight another day. 

On December 20, 2024, American journalist Seymour Hersh—famous for blowing the lid off a cover-up of a massacre of the villagers of My Lai in Vietnam by US troops in the 1960s—wrote that an Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal was in the works. The contours of the just-announced deal are nearly identical to that in his report.  One crucial piece of information, which was not in the deal made public but available in Hersh’s Israeli source-based account, was the role of Saudi Arabia and the quid pro quos. Hersh wrote that as per the deal—reportedly made possible after incoming US President Donald Trump shook his fist at the belligerent Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—the US would extend its nuclear umbrella to Saudi Arabia if Iran gets hold of a nuke. In return, Saudi will fund the reconstruction of Gaza, look away when Israeli warplanes raid Syria, and allow its once-arch rival access to an airfield inside its territory. 

When Iran hit Israel with a barrage of missiles after it assassinated Hezbollah leader Nasrallah and killed scores of others in a “pager attack”, Tel Aviv had to precisely plan its retaliation because of the distance its fighter planes would have had to cover to reach targets deep inside enemy territory. Those targets would be minutes away if the planes were to launch from Saudi Arabia, however. So, the Israeli hostages, who have now spent over 460 days in captivity, paid the price for Tel Aviv to have a closer shot at Iran. 

The Aftermath

Almost all conflicts in West Asia in the past over 50 years somehow link back to the Palestine issue and a still-pending two-state solution. Palestine-trained activists and revolutionaries helped overthrow the Shah in Iran in 1979. That regime has since helped create multiple armed groups in the region, including Hezbollah, Hamas and Houthis.  

While the Saudi aspect—if it exists—of the ceasefire deal may eventually be revealed, it is clear that the US and major powers in the Gulf have decided to militarily ring-fence Iran. While the regime change in Syria with tacit support from Turkey has broken the Iran-Russia supply-and-support link, Israel has crushed Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel, the US and the UK have jointly carried out air raids on the Yemen-based Houthis, another Iran-backed group, whose attacks on ships passing through the Red Sea have disrupted global trade. What would be next? A regime change in Iran? Perhaps that will be property tycoon-turned-diplomat Steve Witkoff’s next assignment. 

(Dinesh Narayanan is a Delhi-based journalist and author of ‘The RSS And The Making Of The Deep Nation’.)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author

If talks go well, the death machines will fall silent in West Asia, or at least Gaza, on Sunday. The US and Qatar have reportedly brokered a deal between Israel and Hamas to end the war.

It’s been a long wait for the misery to end. The killings began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas militants from Gaza attacked Israel on a Jewish holiday. They went about indiscriminately shooting and kidnapping unsuspecting civilians and some soldiers. The worst attack was on a music festival where hundreds of young Israelis were partying. All of it streamed live by the attackers’ body-mounted cameras. By the time Israeli forces took out the last gunmen, the body count had topped 1,200. Over 250 hostages were carried across to Gaza to be stashed away in a subterranean maze where they remained undiscovered even after the whole house was burnt down.

Perhaps the most dramatic and horrific cross-border assault on any country since the Mumbai terror attacks of 2008, it triggered such a display of overwhelming force that it left the world aghast. The shockwaves have left the regional map perceptibly different. It has riven apart communities and split institutions. The scars run so deep that they will not heal in a very long time. It has also laid bare the remarkable pragmatism bordering on chutzpah of the Arab nations.

Reduced To Rubble 

According to multiple reports, nearly 46,000 Gazans, a substantial number of them women and children, have perished in the 15-month war. Most of Gaza has been flattened and rendered uninhabitable. Israel is estimated to have demolished over 1,61,600 homes and damaged 1,94,000 other civil structures. More than 1.9 million of the 2.2 million Gazans have become refugees, most of them corralled into a tiny corner in the north of the Strip. More than 1,000 medical facilities have been destroyed; Rafah does not have a single hospital. The economic loss is estimated at $37 billion. 

Hamas was decapitated when its political leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran, where he had gone to attend the inauguration ceremony for Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. Its director of war, Yahya Sinwar, was killed in Gaza last year, just after the first anniversary of the Hamas attack. A video of a dying Sinwar defiantly throwing a piece of wood at an Israeli military drone indicated that Hamas would not back down despite the carnage. By the end of 2024, Israel had spent over $67 billion on war. It had cost the United States nearly $23 billion until September 2024. Yet, about a hundred Israelis remain hostages somewhere in the ruins, or, more likely, under the ground. 

The Deal

So, what is the new acceptable middle ground in the new deal that the failed talks since the first successful one in November of 2023 could not find? After all, the original objective of the war—freeing hostages—was not achieved. Not only that, Israel will release over 1,000 Palestinians, including those arrested after October 7 and presumably Hamas fighters, in a prisoner exchange. That means while thousands of innocent Gazans, including women and children, paid for the Hamas attack with their lives, its fighters may yet return, alive, prison-hardened, and ready to fight another day. 

On December 20, 2024, American journalist Seymour Hersh—famous for blowing the lid off a cover-up of a massacre of the villagers of My Lai in Vietnam by US troops in the 1960s—wrote that an Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal was in the works. The contours of the just-announced deal are nearly identical to that in his report.  One crucial piece of information, which was not in the deal made public but available in Hersh’s Israeli source-based account, was the role of Saudi Arabia and the quid pro quos. Hersh wrote that as per the deal—reportedly made possible after incoming US President Donald Trump shook his fist at the belligerent Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—the US would extend its nuclear umbrella to Saudi Arabia if Iran gets hold of a nuke. In return, Saudi will fund the reconstruction of Gaza, look away when Israeli warplanes raid Syria, and allow its once-arch rival access to an airfield inside its territory. 

When Iran hit Israel with a barrage of missiles after it assassinated Hezbollah leader Nasrallah and killed scores of others in a “pager attack”, Tel Aviv had to precisely plan its retaliation because of the distance its fighter planes would have had to cover to reach targets deep inside enemy territory. Those targets would be minutes away if the planes were to launch from Saudi Arabia, however. So, the Israeli hostages, who have now spent over 460 days in captivity, paid the price for Tel Aviv to have a closer shot at Iran. 

The Aftermath

Almost all conflicts in West Asia in the past over 50 years somehow link back to the Palestine issue and a still-pending two-state solution. Palestine-trained activists and revolutionaries helped overthrow the Shah in Iran in 1979. That regime has since helped create multiple armed groups in the region, including Hezbollah, Hamas and Houthis.  

While the Saudi aspect—if it exists—of the ceasefire deal may eventually be revealed, it is clear that the US and major powers in the Gulf have decided to militarily ring-fence Iran. While the regime change in Syria with tacit support from Turkey has broken the Iran-Russia supply-and-support link, Israel has crushed Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel, the US and the UK have jointly carried out air raids on the Yemen-based Houthis, another Iran-backed group, whose attacks on ships passing through the Red Sea have disrupted global trade. What would be next? A regime change in Iran? Perhaps that will be property tycoon-turned-diplomat Steve Witkoff’s next assignment. 

(Dinesh Narayanan is a Delhi-based journalist and author of ‘The RSS And The Making Of The Deep Nation’.)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author

(The following is an excerpt from Stanly Johny’s ‘Original Sin: Israel, Palestine and the Revenge of Old West Asia’, being published with the permission of HarperCollins India. Based on his multiple reporting visits to the region and dozens of interviews, Johny traces the roots of the Israel-Palestine conflict.)

After the Hamas attack, Israel launched a devastating bombing campaign on Gaza. “Israel is at war,” declared Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, vowing to take “mighty vengeance” against Hamas. Israel stated that it had the right to respond to Hamas’s terror attack. The world stood by Israel. The United States offered full support. President Joe Biden, who travelled to Israel and met with Netanyahu and his Cabinet members, said, “I don’t believe you have to be a Jew to be a Zionist, and I am a Zionist.”

Netanyahu set two goals for the IDF. “Crush Hamas” and release the hostages. The IDF carried out air strikes across Gaza for weeks, before launching a full-scale invasion, first in the north, and then expanding to the whole of the enclave. In the initial stage, more than 1 million people in northern Gaza were ordered by the IDF to leave their homes within 24 hours. Gaza City in northern Gaza, the largest city in the enclave, was turned into a pile of rubble within weeks.

(The cover of Original Sin. Courtesy: HarperCollins India)

The use of disproportionate force against the enemy is a well-known Israeli method (the Dahiya doctrine). Dahiya in Lebanon was a stronghold of Hezbollah, the Shia militia. In the 2006 war with Hezbollah, Israel carried out widespread bombing of Dahiya, flattening the town. In October 2008, while warning Hezbollah amid tensions in northern Israel, General Gadi Eisenkot, then head of the Army’s Northern Division, said Israel would use “disproportionate force” to destroy Lebanese villages from where Hezbollah was firing rockets. “What happened in the Dahiya quarter of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which Israel is fired on… From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they are military bases,” said Gen. Eisenkot, who later became Israel’s Chief of General Staff and then a minister in Netanyahu’s Cabinet. Post-7 October, the IDF followed the same tactics in Gaza.

In April 2024, I met an Israeli journalist, who calls himself a right-winger, in Jerusalem. We had an open discussion about the war and Israel’s objectives at a restaurant in the Old City. 

‘This War Has A Cost’

The effects of the war were visible everywhere. When I was in Jerusalem the last time, the flea market near Jaffa Street was so crowded that I found it difficult to walk in between traders and shoppers. This time, it looked like a ghost street, with only a few shops being open. Restaurants were mostly empty. A tour guide I had met on my previous trip told me the war took a huge hit on the economy. At the Church of Holy Sepulchre, the fourth-century church that is considered the holiest place of worship in Christianity, there was hardly anyone besides our group when we visited the place in the evening. The journalist told me that like every war, “this one also has a cost. And Israelis are bearing it”.

He said 7 October changed everything. Things can’t just go back to the 7 October status quo, he said. I raised the issue of collective punishment of Gazans. The journalist, a kippah-wearing, bearded man in his early forties, said there was a debate on whether the people of Gaza were culpable in the whole disaster or not.

“In what sense?” I asked him. “They voted for Hamas,” he said.

“So are you saying that they should be punished as a whole?” 

“No, that’s not what I am saying. Hamas is part of Gaza’s society. You look at their charter. They are committed to the destruction of Israel. And they were still voted to power.”

“But in that case Likud’s founding charter also lays claims to the land between the River and the Sea,” I said. “And Likud has been in power in Israel for how many years!” 

“You can’t compare a legitimate ruling political party with a terrorist entity,” he said.

He then told me he didn’t agree with the military tactics the IDF is using in Gaza. By that time, almost all of Gaza’s population had been displaced. People in the north and central Gaza had been pushed to the Rafah border in the south. There was a growing international demand to let Gazans return to their homes in the north. “Everybody says people in Gaza should be allowed to return to Gaza City and Khan Younis. But where will they go? There is not a single building standing in northern Gaza. The whole city has been brought to the ground,” he said.

“Isn’t this mindless vengeance? Does this help Israel meet its long-term strategic objectives?” I asked him.

“I don’t know. I don’t even know if there’s a strategy,” he replied. 

‘The War Will Be Long’

Two days later, at a Committee Room in the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament, I met Boaz Bismuth, a Member of the Knesset (MK) from Netanyahu’s Likud Party. I asked him if he saw an end to the war. Six months into the war, Israel had not met any of its declared objectives. “The war will be long. At least one year. We are making progress. We will meet our objectives,” said the MK.

Bismuth, a bespectacled, clean-shaven, tall man with dark hair, wore a dark blue suit and tie. He seemed to be in a hurry, but was careful with the words he used. “I was also a journalist,” he said, probably recalling his stint as the editor of Israel Hayom, a Hebrew language daily. In 2022, he joined Likud and became an MK. Ever since the 7 October attack happened, Bismuth has taken a hardline position on the war, calling for erasing Hamas. “The cruel and monstrous people from Gaza took an active part in the pogrom in the Israeli settlements, in the systematic murder of Jews and the shedding of their blood, in the kidnapping of children, old people, and mothers, and in tying up babies and burning them alive!” he wrote on X (formerly Twitter), on October 16. “One mustn’t pity the cruel, there is no place for any humanitarian gesture—the memory of Amalek must be erased!” he added, referring to the biblical enemy nation of the Israelites.

“We have two objectives,” Bismuth told me in the Knesset committee room. “One is to bring back the hostages. And the other is to eliminate Hamas.” While asked about the mounting civilian casualties in Gaza, he said, “I am not at war against civilians. I am at war against Hamas. People in Gaza elected Hamas. Still, I am not at war against them.”

For Bismuth, sustainable peace is possible in the region only if Hamas is defeated. “If we lose the war, we lose the idea of peace. If I lose, I lose everything. So, I am not going to lose it,” he said, adding that other countries, including India, should support Israel in this war instead of attacking the way Israel is conducting the war. “Every country that respects itself should call Hamas what it is—a terrorist entity.”

‘We Are Aware Of The Dangers’

This was the politician’s view of the war. Later in the day, I went to the Israeli Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem, where, inside a meeting room, I met Michel Ronen, a senior diplomat who headed the Bureau of Southeast Asia at the ministry. I asked him about the diplomatic fallout of the war. By that time, much of the global opinion had turned against Israel. There were cracks in Israel’s relationship with the US, its biggest backer, which was becoming increasingly impatient with the mounting civilian casualties in Gaza. “We are working to make sure that the political and international legitimacy stays for our military operations. We are aware of the dangers. We lost international support for our military operation in 1973. The UN demanded a ceasefire in three weeks. But this time, we see more flexibility,” the ambassador told me.

When I met him, Qatar and Egypt, with the blessings of the United States, were already mediating ceasefire talks between Israel and Egypt. Cairo hosted the talks. I asked the ambassador about the military goals Israel had set and the role of diplomacy in the midst of the ongoing war. “We are not looking at a victory formula. We want hostages back. That’s what our urgent priority is,” he said.

But will a hostage deal lead to a permanent ceasefire in Gaza? Hamas, which struck a limited deal with Israel in November and released some 100 hostages in return for a week-long ceasefire, later demanded a permanent ceasefire for another hostage deal. “I cannot guarantee what would happen after a deal. There could be a ceasefire or there could be more attacks,” said Ambassador Ronen.

I asked him about the larger Palestine question. He gave the standard reply: Israel will continue working with its partners for peace.

“Ambassador, as a diplomat, do you still believe a two-state solution is possible?” I asked him, before wrapping up our conversation.

“Some here call the two-state solution a two-state illusion,” came his quick reply.

(Disclaimer: The author and publisher of the book are solely responsible for the contents of the book or any excerpt derived therefrom. NDTV shall not be responsible or liable for any claims arising from the contents of the book including any claims of defamation, infringement of intellectual property rights or any other right of any third party or of law. Paragraph breaks and subheadings have been added by NDTV for readers’ ease.)

Damascus has fallen. Once again. One of the oldest cities in the world has fallen. To rise again from its rubble, heralding a new order. In its rise and fall, Damascus has lessons for all civilisations, all rebels, and all regimes.

It was in July 2012 that rebels penetrated Damascus, hitherto considered inviolable. Both the regime and the rebels understood its importance—military and symbolic. The rebels advanced to the heavily militarised capital of Syria but did not make any real gains. A year later, in August 2013, the Syrian regime launched Operation Capital Shield. The capital had to be shielded, and any amount of force was acceptable to thwart any rebel attack. The city was safeguarded through the use of disproportionate force against rebels operating from around Damascus. Only temporarily so. Eleven years later, the regime has fallen. For the sixth time, at least, since the 1st century AD Roman conquest of Damascus’s Seleucid empire.

The Cycle Of Power

Not only has Damascus seen violent regime changes, it has also experienced ethnic and religious clashes, including the Crusades. But in almost every significant clash—civilisational or political—one thing has stayed common: recapturing of the lost ground. The cyclical nature of power. The centuries-old unabated contestation on the socio-political turf of Damascus has defined its character. The current developments in Syria, therefore, ought to be examined through a more expansive glass of history and culture.

Peter Frankopan’s The Silk Roads underscores the importance of Damascus as an emporium adjacent to one of the most thriving trade routes of the world. Despite no easy access to the Mediterranean Sea, it was in the league of great cosmopolitan cities such as the Byzantine Constantinople (Istanbul), the Greco-Roman Antioch, and the old Chinese capital city of Chang’an. Its early embrace of agricultural practices owing to the natural inland water systems of the Barada River and investments in irrigation infrastructure made Damascus a land of plenty. 

Even at the peak of Christian-Muslim religious clashes around the 10th century AD, traders had a breezy time in Damascus. Muslim traders from Spain, for example, were protected by the Christians of Damascus. For one of the oldest inhabited cities of the world, with no religious underpinnings originating from any religious text, trade was vital. Traders, the outsiders, were therefore immune to the local political and religious strife. Damascene society depended on the “outsiders” to retain its regional power as a seat of sociocultural dominance. Damascus, as perceived today, is essentially a result of four centuries of Ottoman rule that came to an end with the First World War. The city was the seat of the Turkish Wali. 

Lands Of ‘Outsiders’

Damascus, curiously, wasn’t ruled by a local dynasty ever since the overthrow of the Aram-Damascus kingdom in the eighth century BC. This feature makes Damascus closer to Delhi than its Phoenician, Judean, and Arab neighbours. The “outsiders” soon started becoming the insiders, and the city evolved. Delhi has this in common with Damascus and lessons from the latter are, therefore, pertinent to us.

The Assad regime’s rise and fall alerts us to the limitations of liberalism when it stays within the elite confines. It is always prone to crumbling under the weight of popular mobilisation. The mainstay of Syria’s multicultural nature was consociational engagements between different ethno-religious groups at different times in history. The Assad regime’s politicisation of the Syrian society’s multiculturalism was self-serving. After the military coup of 1970 that installed Hafez al-Assad as a totalitarian ruler, all forms of dissent began to be crushed, ironically, by the ruling Ba’ath Party, the regional champion of dissenters in the Arab world.

When liberalism gets weaponised thus, it spells doom for not just the conservatives but also the quintessential liberal values. Bashar al-Assad carried forward this legacy of his father with more zeal and ruthlessness. The rebellion against him, therefore, needs to be seen as not only political but also socio-religious. The Sunni Muslims of Syria, the majority group, clearly had had enough of the marginalisation heaped on them by the Alawite (Shia) Assad family and their acolytes. 

Liberalism And Liberals

This should appear familiar to us. The undermining of liberal values by liberals themselves, the ascent of conservative forces, the politics of exclusion, and the many fires of violent ethno-religious clashes, we have seen it all. Politics of exclusion, even when the most inclusionary players indulge in it, never ends well. The civil war in Syria needs to be seen as another element in the continuum that has the return of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Islamic Revolution of Iran of 1979, the reactionary overthrow of the Kemalist order in Turkey by Erdogan, and the fall of Sheikh Hasina in Dhaka as landmark events.

Immediately after the fall of Damascus, scenes of celebrations (and looting) started flooding the news and social media. Impervious to them, Israel moved to plant its flag beyond the earlier buffer zone. And this is the lesson Delhi’s regime and rebels must pay heed to.

(Nishtha Gautam is a Delhi-based author and academic.) 

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author