Palestinian Arabs alarmed at Israel's pivot towards Asia

From Nicola Nasser, a Palestinian Arab journalist, in the Asia Times:

Israel is carving economic inroads into Asia which could be deep enough to compromise traditional Asian political support for Arabs. If this trend continues, growing economic Israeli-Asian relations will develop into political ties that neutralize Asia in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's official visit to Japan from May 11-15 is not an historic breakthrough per se in bilateral relations that date back to 1952.

Neither is the normalization of relations in "a matter of weeks" between Israel and Turkey, which was the first major Muslim country to recognize the State of Israel in 1949, as was promised by the Turkish Premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan on April 27.

However, both events highlight a breakthrough Israel has discreetly achieved in pivoting to Asia, which was once an reservoir of support for Arabs in their conflict with Israel over Palestine.

"For the first time, in 2014, Israeli exports with Asia will exceed trade with the US, pushing it from second to third place (behind the EU)," director of the Foreign Trade Administration at Israel's Ministry of the Economy, Ohad Cohen, was quoted as saying by Israeli "Globes" on April 27.

While opening more trade attache offices in Asia, the Israeli Ministry of the Economy has closed a number of European trade offices in Austria, Hungary, Finland and Sweden "in order to refocus on emerging markets," Cohen explained.

"Today we have five offices in China, three in India, and we have added attaches in Vietnam and an office in Manila," he added.

US President Barack Obama visited Asia in April trying to demonstrate that his promised strategic "pivot" to the region was seeing progress real. However, the Israelis seem to be making more secure progress in a similar direction.

"'Pivot to Asia' is a term that might be applied to Israel," Roger Cohen wrote in The New York Times on April 24, citing a boom in its trade with China to more than $8 billion in 2013. Israel's military and technological cooperation with China had once created a crisis in the US-Israeli relations.

Cohen noted that while the US and Europe continue to "huff and puff" about the illegal Israeli colonial settlements in the occupied Palestinian West Bank "Asia does business. India has already bought sea-to-sea missiles, radar for a missile-intercept system and communications equipment from Israel."

India could be a case study for Israel. According to the website of the Embassy of India in Egypt, "Much of our external trade passes along the Suez Canal, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden," all almost exclusively Arab sea routes, and "Our total bilateral trade with the Arab countries is over US$ 110 billion and the region is home to 4.5 million Indians and caters to 70% of our energy imports."
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Yet, despite its vital ties with Arab nations, India is now also the largest customer for military equipment and the largest Asian economic partner of their arch-enemy - Israel. By courting India and China, Israel can neutralize Asian pro-Arab and pro-Palestinian influence in the region.
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Writing in Forbes on May 14 last year, professor at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver, Jonathan Adelman, and the acting executive director for Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME), Asaf Romirowsky, gave a controversial explanation for Israel's apparent breakthrough in Asia.

Historically, "Asia largely lacks the anti-Semitism that was so prominent in Europe" and "Israel was like most Asian states ... a new state born after World War II after a struggle with a Western colonial power, in this case Great Britain," they said.

"Geographically, Israel is in West Asia, only four hours by air from India and 11 hours by air from China. Historically, Israel, like most Asian states, is a new state born after World War II after a struggle with a Western colonial power, in this case Great Britain. ... Economically, Israel's rapid transition from Third World power to First World 'start-up nation' echoes the great transformation underway in such Asian countries as India, China and the Four Tigers."

The authors add: "In intelligence matters, which are so critical to many developing countries, Mossad, with its strong human intelligence capabilities, is attractive for helping these countries overcome foreign threats to their rise to power."

In the full article Nasser attempts. poorly, to paint these developments as disastrous for peace and as wrongheaded for the Asian nations that are already reaping benefits from their relationship with Israel. She even claims that it makes more sense for Asian nations to cooperate with Arab intelligence agencies than with Israel in fighting Islamist terror!

Which indicates that Palestinian Arabs are panicking at the prospect of Asia becoming more pro-Israel. Even more insulting is that they themselves are being treated as irrelevant, as the world gets more tired of their whining and stunts and blaming all of their problems, past and future, on Israel.