Of more than 60 diplomatic trips undertaken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi since May 2014 when the NDA government came to power, his visit to Israel on July 4 will be among the most significant. He will become the first serving Indian Prime Minister to visit Israel – a momentous step after the two countries officially established diplomatic ties in 1992.
India secured Independence in 1947, Israel was established in 1948. Though India, under Jawaharlal Nehru, officially recognised Israel in September 1950, relations didn’t take off for a long time, largely because India under Nehru had been sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and, in the initial years, had favoured the idea of one federal entity for both Jews and Arabs instead of two states.
Though ties were relatively low-key, there were moments of serious co-operation, especially during the 1971 war between India and Pakistan where Israel Prime Minister Golda Meir offered assistance to her Indian counterpart, Indira Gandhi.
It wasn’t until 1992, under PV Narasimha Rao, that India and Israel established embassies in each other’s state capitals which marked the formalisation of diplomatic ties.
While this was in the lead-up to the Oslo accords, an unofficial meeting in 1985 between then Israeli PM Shimon Peres and Indian PM Rajiv Gandhi is reported to have played a role in the improvement in ties. But that wasn’t all.