India’s rhetoric on a two-state solution in Palestine is at odds with Israel’s geographical reorderi

On July 7, Narendra Modi stood beside Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto in Jakarta and declared that India supports “a two-state solution and the pursuit of lasting peace” in Palestine. Modi was repeating a line that Indian prime ministers have recited for decades. It is a comfortable formulation that costs New Delhi nothing and offends no one.

A week later, Indian officials at the Palestine Donor Group meetings in Brussels reiterated the commitment, welcoming diplomatic avenues towards Palestinian statehood and UN membership.

But this language now describes a country that no longer exists in any coherent, contiguous form, and every week that passes widens the gap between rhetoric and reality.

On July 14, just a week after Modi’s Jakarta remarks, Israel’s security cabinet approved a budget of $434 million to establish 34 new settlements in the occupied West Bank. This is the latest move in a wider settlement project, the scale of which makes the two-state framework difficult to sustain in its classical sense.

Israel’s settler expansion has drawn criticism abroad, but the same chasm between word and deed is visible closer to home. India has kept up its rhetorical support for Palestinian statehood even as it deepens its own ties with Israel.

New Delhi voted in favour of last September’s UN General Assembly resolution...

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