India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to arrive in Israel on Wednesday for a two-day visit – his second trip to the country. But this one is about far more than ceremony, contracts, or even bilateral warmth. It comes at a moment of geopolitical inversion.
On the tarmac at Ben-Gurion Airport on a sweltering July day in 2017, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu greeted Modi with the words, “Prime Minister, we’ve been waiting for you for a long time.”
And, indeed, Israel had. It took nearly 70 years for an Indian prime minister to visit the Jewish state – a state India voted against at the United Nations in 1947 and with which it established diplomatic relations only in 1992.
Israel had to wait only nine years for a return visit.
In the intervening years, what was once a cautious, low-profile relationship has matured into one of Israel’s most consequential strategic partnerships. Modi now arrives not merely as a visitor but as the leader of the world’s most populous country and one of the fastest-rising global powers.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Indian PM Narendra Modi at a joint press conference in New Delhi, India, January 15, 2018; illustrative.
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