 "Sa’ar, Netanyahu, Herzog…: India, Israel ties set for leg-up with high profile visits")
With Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar’s visit this week, Indian and Israeli public engagements will get momentum again after more than two years of lull because of the war in the Gaza Strip.
Sa’ar’s visit is believed to set the stage for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to India as early as next month. An Israeli prime minister’s visit to India has been pending since 2019 because of political turmoil in Israel, Covid-19 pandemic, and the war in the Gaza Strip.
Sa’ar will depart for India on Monday for meetings with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
While India and Israel have a close security relationship, high-level visits have been relatively fewer in recent years after the initial momentum built during the first term of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who because the first Indian premier to visit Israel in 2017. The next year, Netanyahu visited India.
But high-level visits have been on hold since because of political instability in Israel.
In 2019, Netanyahu postponed the visit to India twice as Israel held repeat parliamentary elections. Then, the pandemic struck. In 2022, then-PM Naftali Bennet’s visit to India had been announced but he tested positive for Covid-19 just weeks ahead of the visit. By the time he recovered, Israel was in the grips of a political crisis again that did not allow him to make the visit.
The next year, the Hamas-led attack of October 7 ruled out any visit for the duration of the war.
Israel’s flurry of visits to India
Sa’ar’s visit to India comes around two months after Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s visit to India.
In September, Smotrich had visited India to sign the India-Israel Bilateral Investment Agreement (BIA).
Impact Shorts
More ShortsThe investment treaty was seen as a precursor to a free trade agreement between the two countries that is under negotiations.
After Sa’ar and Netanyahu, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Katz is expected to visit India in January or February 2026 and President Isaac Herzog is expected to make a visit in the first half of the year.
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