Prime Minister Narendra Modi will leave for Israel on a two-day visit from February 25 to 26, sources told PTI on Monday, though full details of the visit are not yet known.
The news of Prime Minister Modi’s visit to the country was first announced by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he addressed the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations on Sunday.
“Parliament speech on the anvil. Who is coming here next week? Narendra Modi,” Netanyahu told the gathering.
This would be the second visit to Israel by an Indian leader, the first being in July 2017, which was also the first ever by an Indian Prime Minister in the Jewish state.
“A huge alliance between Israel and India and we will discuss all possible kinds of cooperation. Now you know, India is not a small country. It has 1.4 billion people. India is enormously powerful, enormously popular,” the news agency quoted him as saying.
India-Israel BIT
The two countries signed a Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) during the visit of Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich in September, followed by the signing of a Terms of Reference (TOR) leading to an FTA during Trade and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal’s visit to Israel in November last year.
In the same year as Goyal’s visit, India and Israel signed a landmark agreement to strengthen defense, industrial and technological cooperation that will allow sharing of advanced technologies to support joint development and co-production, according to an official government release.