From India to Kush… Netanyahu seeks to form an alliance
A biblical term of From India to Kush, was used by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday evening to refer to an axis he seeks to shape that stretches across the Middle East to the Mediterranean.
Netanyahu said his country has a great interest in establishing a special axis against the Shiite and Sunni axes that includes many countries.
Netanyahu’s statement came during a conference of Israel’s Shin Bet security service, ahead of the start of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Israel on Wednesday.
“On the one hand, we are facing a wounded Shiite axis (i.e., Iran and its allies), but there is, of course, the Sunni axis of the Muslim Brotherhood,” Netanyahu added.
“We’ve a great interest in establishing our own axis,” he said, adding that it includes countries that oppose what he described as the “two axes of radical Islam”.
“This includes many countries, some of which visit us, even these days, and some of which we visit,” he said.
Modi’s visit to Israel will last two days and will witness the signing of memorandums of understanding in the fields of security and technology.
Netanyahu continued: “I am talking about a whole circle that includes the Middle East… I wanted to use the biblical phrase, appropriate for Purim (Purim, which falls early next month): “From India to Kush… Very close… And in between them all the way to the Mediterranean Sea… A new axis”.
Kush is an ancient kingdom that appeared in the far north of Sudan in 750 BC and fell in 300 AD.
On Sunday, Netanyahu said during the weekly meeting of the Israeli government that Modi would arrive in Israel on Wednesday and address the Knesset.
“In addition to its unique alliance with the United States and personal ties with President Donald Trump, Israel is deepening its ties with India, Arab countries, African countries, Greece, Cyprus, and other countries in Asia,” he said at the time.
Netanyahu noted at the time that the goal of this step was to “create an axis of countries that see reality and challenges identically in the face of radical axes, whether the Shiite axis or the crystallized Sunni axis”.
