Looking at the latest rounds of Israeli pounding from the prism of India-Pakistan relations throws up some plausible theories.
In a sense the Israeli strikes against Hamas targets in Gaza have significantly reduced prospects of a conflict in South Asia. While there is no geopolitical law that prevents many conflagrations to go on simultaneously around the world, something tells me that the sharpness of the rhetoric between India and Pakistan has suddenly been blunted. The latest example and perhaps the most consequential example of this are comments by Pakistan’s army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. He has emphasized the need to “de-escalate and avoid conflict” with India.
The fact that Kayani’s remarks came during his meeting with visiting Chinese vice-foreign minister He Yafei give them particular weight. He was sent by Beijing with the specific purpose of diffusing tensions between India and Pakistan. If there is one country whose counsel Pakistan’s military would still pay attention to it is China. There is no way Pakistan can afford to displease its giant neighbor to its north even as it is needling another giant neighbor to its east. Unlike India, Pakistan has no emotional baggage of the past riding its back since 1947 in its relations with China. It is a strictly utilitarian and guilt-free association. That distance gives Pakistan a sense of comfort with China. Of course, Beijing has its own geostrategic reasons to keep Pakistan in check.
Whether or not anyone explicitly acknowledges it either in India or Pakistan the violence between Israel and Palestine is viewed as a reminder by the two South Asian neighbors what their own future could look like were they to persist with the level of animus and distrust that got heightened after the Mumbai attacks. It is tempting for many hawks in India to applaud Israel’s “no non-sense” brutality in retaliation against similar brutality from the other side. The point to remember is that since 1967 Six-Day War we have seen numerous such tactical military escalations but they have not resolved anything. It is not my place to offer a solution to this conflict but it is commonsense to say that killing people from time to time on either side does not seem to work.