Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to travel to Israel next week, Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu declared on Sunday even before the two sides officially announce the visit.
While there were indications in Delhi of Modi’s impending visit — his second — there was no official word on it till late on Monday evening, even a day after Netanyahu spoke about it in a public address in Jerusalem.
According to a PTI report from Jerusalem, Netanyahu referred to the impending 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,” the Israeli Premier 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 added.
There have been ministerial engagements and high-level contacts over the past couple of months that culminated in the signing of a Bilateral Investment Treaty and an understanding on the terms of reference for a Free Trade Agreement.