New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will travel to Israel on a two-day visit from February 25 to 26, sources said on Monday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu first broke news of Modi’s visit while addressing the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organisations on Sunday.
“Parliament address on the anvil. Who’s coming here next week? Narendra Modi,” Netanyahu told the gathering.
“Tremendous alliance between Israel and India, and we are going to discuss all sorts of cooperation. Now, you know, India is not a small country. It has 1.4 billion people. India is enormously powerful, enormously popular,” he stressed.
A source in Jerusalem told PTI that PM Modi’s visit is ‘likely to be short from February 25 to 26″, but “its impact is deep given the popularity Modi enjoys not only in Israel but around the world”.
While the programme around the visit is being worked out, Modi is expected to address the Israeli Knesset (parliament).
He is likely to touch upon all issues of bilateral and regional interest during his two-day visit.
This would be his second visit to Israel, the first being in July 2017, which was also the first ever by an Indian Prime Minister to the Jewish state.
The high-profile visit of the Indian Prime Minister comes on the heels of several other high-level ministerial exchanges from both sides.
Minister of Tourism Haim Katz, Minister of Economy and Industry Nir Barkat, Minister of Agriculture and Food Security Avi Dichter, and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich visited India last year as the strategic partners built up momentum to sign a Free Trade Agreement. — PTI