The vote against Israel

Having faced multiple blockades, Nepal cannot be indifferent to the plight of the people of Gaza.

Following the overthrow of the hidebound Rana regime and establishment of the country’s first democratic government in 1959, Nepal was eager to expand its diplomatic wings. In the eyes of the new Prime Minister BP Koirala, if his landlocked country was to overcome its geopolitical constraints, it was vital to reach out to possible friends all around the globe. Meanwhile, Israel, since it formally came into being in 1948, was desperately looking to build support for the Jewish state that had sprouted in the heart of the Muslim world. So Koirala did not hesitate to establish diplomatic ties with Israel in 1960, making Nepal the first country in South Asia to recognise “the right of Israel to exist within secure and internationally recognised boundaries,” which, in fact, remains Nepal’s official stand to this day. Apparently, Israeli diplomats rather ruefully recounted the same history with their counterparts in Kathmandu after Nepal, on Friday, joined six other South Asian states to vote in favour of a United Nations resolution calling for an immediate cessation of hostilities and unhindered humanitarian access in the Gaza Strip. (India abstained from the vote.)