India on Thursday cleared the air on voting with Israel in the United Nations Economic and Social Council (Ecosoc) on June 6, asserting that “our vote should not be construed as a vote against the Palestinian cause”.

On June 6, India voted with Israel at 0 — one of the six principal organs of the UN that is responsible for coordinating its economic and social wings — to keep a Palestinian “human rights organisation” from getting observer status in UN institutions. Israel insists that the organisation, Shahed, is linked to Hamas, the Palestinian fundamentalist organisation.

“We voted in favour of a proposal which was submitted by Israel at the Ecosoc for further scrutiny by the committee on NGOs on the application from an NGO — the Palestinian Association for Human Rights (Shahed) — requesting consultative status. The proposal was submitted by Israel based on information that the NGO allegedly has close contacts with terrorist organisations,” foreign office spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said in response to a specific question on India’s vote.

“Our vote in favour of the proposal is in line with India’s position on greater scrutiny by the NGO committee of the consultative status applications for possible terrorist links and to screen the NGO applications with the Sanctions List of the UNSC before the Ecosoc NGO status is granted to them,” he added.

While India has sought to make the vote look like a routine affair, Israel viewed it as a significant step. Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu had thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi “for your support and for standing with Israel at the UN” in what is being largely perceived as a departure from India’s traditional position in such fora.

Even after relations between India and Israel improved in recent years, New Delhi has continued with its time-tested advocacy of the two-state solution on the issue of Palestine.

India stayed away from the celebrations organised by the Israeli foreign ministry in May to mark the opening of a US embassy in contested Jerusalem. Earlier, India had voted in favour of the UN General Assembly resolution rejecting the US recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

When Shahed’s application for observer status came up at the Ecosoc on June 6, Israel moved a resolution seeking reassessment of the clearance given by the UN organisation in March, citing new evidence linking the Lebanon-based outfit to Hamas and the Iranian-inspired Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

While the US has listed Hamas as a “foreign terrorist organisation”, its military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, has been similarly designated by several western countries. In March, Israel designated Shahed as a terrorist organisation for its alleged links to Hamas and the PIJ.

Since Shahed had been put on the list of organisations that would receive observer status at the June session of Ecosoc, Israel had sought reassessment and shared with all member countries the purported information it had of the outfit’s links to Hamas and the PIJ. India, along with 27 other countries, voted for Israel’s resolution, while 14 nations voted against it.