Welcome to Foreign Policy’s South Asia Brief.

The highlights this week: India reacts to the Israel-Hamas battle, devastating earthquakes strike Afghanistan, and a distinguished Pakistani cricket broadcaster leaves India halfway by way of the Cricket World Cup.

Four days after horrific assaults by Hamas towards Israel sparked a battle within the area, India’s response has are available in two tweets from Prime Minister Narendra Modi that condemned terrorism and expressed solidarity with Israel. New Delhi has pleasant ties with each Israel and the Palestinian facet, so it have to be cautious in its public messaging. But its relationship with Israel has grown quickly lately. The Israel-Hamas battle, as urged by Modi’s tweets, might draw the 2 international locations even nearer.

During its first few a long time of independence, India loved shut relations with the Palestinians. Relations with Israel solely started to strengthen after the Cold War. A pivotal second got here in 1999, when Israel sent weapons to India throughout the latter’s temporary battle with Pakistan. But ties have blossomed within the Modi period: In 2017, he turned the first Indian prime minister to go to Israel. Since then, trade and arms sales have surged. Technological cooperation—particularly in agriculture and surveillance—has expanded, too.

The equally robust approaches that Modi and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu take towards counterterrorism, together with their reported good chemistry, have strengthened relations as effectively. That terrorism triggered the Israel-Hamas battle may generate a powerful sense of solidarity between Israel and India, which has additionally suffered terrorist assaults and confronted the persistent risk of terrorism for years.

Recent geopolitical developments within the Middle East have bolstered the partnership whereas placing some distance between India and the Palestinians. New Delhi embraced the 2020 Abraham Accords, which normalized Israel’s relations with a few of its Arab neighbors and enabled the emergence of recent initiatives—such because the I2U2 quad and a new transport corridor—that embrace India. Multilateral cooperation within the Middle East is vital for New Delhi, given its commerce pursuits there and the big Indian diaspora within the Arab Gulf.

India’s relations within the Middle East additionally align extra intently with Israel’s pursuits than the Palestinians’. Some of India’s high companions within the area—corresponding to Egypt and the United Arab Emirates—have formal relations with Israel, whereas one other—Saudi Arabia—was reportedly closing in on a normalization deal earlier than the Israel-Hamas battle started. Iran, a Hamas ally, is likely one of the few Middle Eastern states that has bumps in its relations with India, primarily as a result of New Delhi has reduced its industrial ties with Tehran in deference to U.S. sanctions.

Despite all this, India can’t afford to offer the impression that it’s absolutely taking Israel’s facet. It nonetheless helps the two-state resolution and in the previous few years has voted towards Israel in a number of United Nations resolutions and authorized humanitarian support to Palestinian refugees. India gained’t need to antagonize key companions within the Middle East which are appalled by the brutality of Israel’s retaliation in Gaza after the Hamas assaults.

India will seemingly preserve a low public profile throughout the battle, privately signaling its help to Israel whereas speaking to Palestinian interlocutors that its expressions of solidarity with Israel are a response to Hamas terrorism and never a rejection of the Palestinian trigger. Given the reported unhappiness amongst India’s Arab companions about New Delhi’s refusal to say Israel’s retaliatory operations in Gaza, an Indian assertion calling for de-escalation and dialogue can’t be dominated out.

Still, increasing India-Israel cooperation and a brand new battle that amplifies shared issues counsel that India’s long-standing coverage of balancing its relations with Israel and the Palestinians may quickly face a check.

South Asia reacts to Israel-Hamas battle. South Asian international locations have responded to the disaster in Israel and the Palestinian territories simply as one would possibly count on. The states that don’t acknowledge Israel—Afghanistan, Bangladesh, the Maldives, and Pakistan—have stated much less about Hamas’s terrorism, as a substitute highlighting Israel’s brutalities in Gaza, and reiterated requires a Palestinian state. Two international locations which have formal relations with Israel, Nepal and Sri Lanka, have centered their public messaging extra on the Hamas assaults.

Nepal’s response was much like India’s, expressing solidarity with Israel. However, the nation was straight affected: Ten Nepali college students had been killed within the Hamas assaults in Israel, with several others nonetheless lacking. Sri Lanka’s response was extra balanced than others within the area, expressing concern about deaths in each Israel and Gaza. Bhutan, which additionally has formal relations with Israel, doesn’t seem to have issued a public response to the battle.

The Israel-Hamas battle may have a number of direct impacts on South Asian states’ pursuits. India and Nepal every have a large contingent of residents in Israel. Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan have giant numbers of employees within the Gulf states, and a wider regional battle may influence their safety. Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan additionally rely upon the area for oil and fuel provides. There are additionally some potential inner safety threats: Hard-line Islamist events in Bangladesh and Pakistan which are hostile to Israel might stage protests that might flip violent.

Devastating earthquakes slam Afghanistan. Last Saturday, two 6.3-magnitude earthquakes hit Herat province in Afghanistan, with a 3rd robust earthquake placing the area on Wednesday. As of Tuesday, Taliban officers estimated that just about 2,500 folks had died, however the dying toll is anticipated to rise. A U.N. statement on Sunday stated that throughout 11 villages within the province, each residence was destroyed.

Afghans are not any strangers to the horrible impacts of pure disasters, however their plight has grown extra precarious for the reason that Taliban takeover as a result of many worldwide donors—including the United Nations—have decreased support. Afghans have additionally been cursed with remarkably dangerous timing: Saturday’s earthquakes occurred on the identical day that Hamas attacked Israel, capturing international consideration and sure the lion’s share of funding.

As a end result, rescue efforts this week had been in lots of circumstances led by earthquake survivors themselves, digging by way of rubble with their naked palms to attempt to discover lacking members of the family. The distant location of the earthquakes has additional hampered rescue missions.

Flood kills dozens in India. More than 140 people stay lacking one week after a large flash flood brought on by a glacial lake overflowing its banks within the northeastern Indian state of Sikkim. More than 80 people are at the moment confirmed useless. The scale of the tragedy is immense: Local officers said 49 of the victims had been swept to date downstream that they had been present in West Bengal state; others had been present in northern Bangladesh.

The lethal flooding has sparked debate in India in regards to the want for early warning methods. India’s National Disaster Management Authority acknowledged that it had surveyed the lake, which has lengthy been deemed in danger for flooding, a couple of month in the past to plan for the doable set up of such methods.

The India-Pakistan cricket honeymoon seems to be over, if it had ever began. In late September, Pakistan’s nationwide cricket crew arrived in India for the primary time in seven years—for this 12 months’s Cricket World Cup—and obtained a heat welcome from Indian followers. But the cricket camaraderie didn’t final lengthy. On Monday, Zainab Abbas, a distinguished Pakistani cricket broadcaster, abruptly left India in the course of the event.

Abbas’s departure got here quickly after an Indian lawyer filed a complaint towards her for allegedly posting derogatory tweets towards India and Hinduism—again in 2014. Abbas hasn’t publicly responded to the allegation; the International Cricket Council stated she left India on account of private causes. Last week, Abbas posted a message on X, previously often called Twitter, lauding India-Pakistan cricket cooperation.

In reality, Abbas was one of many few Pakistanis fortunate sufficient to make it to India. Another set off for tensions is that dozens of Pakistanis, together with round 60 accredited sports activities journalists, haven’t obtained visas to enter India. They have already missed Pakistan’s first two matches, each victories. (The Pakistani crew itself managed to will get visas solely hours earlier than touring to India.)

This week, Pakistani cricket officers known as on their authorities to intervene to attempt to expedite the visas. But time is working out for journalists and followers to get clearance to journey, with Pakistan’s much-anticipated matchup with India scheduled for Saturday.

In the Daily Mirror, journalist P.Okay. Balachandran warns of worsening ethnic tensions between the Sinhalese and Tamil communities in Sri Lanka’s Eastern Province. “This conflict appears to be insolvable in the absence of an overarching political and moral leadership that can bridge the two,” he writes.

In the Print, former navy advisor Lt. Gen. Prakash Menon laments Modi’s lack of ability to ease unrest within the state of Manipur. It “seems that he expects the suffering of Manipuris to be drowned out by the cacophony of state and national elections. If this is the case, it could be a … highly lamentable act of shortsightedness in the practice of statecraft,” he writes.