S Jaishankar heads to Israel, to engage with new leadership

Foreign minister S Jaishankar will travel to Tel Aviv next week to engage with the new Israeli government-the first physical meeting between the leaders of the two nations after the new regime took charge in June this year.

Jaishankar is expected to meet Israel's President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, besides other officials.

Ahead of the Israel trip, Jaishankar is expected to make an official visit to the UAE, one of India's close strategic allies. The UAE and Israel, which established formal diplomatic ties last year, are keen on joint projects involving India.


On Friday, a top Israeli foreign ministry official said India is "a strategic partner and a very close friend". Alon Ushpiz, the director general of Israel's foreign ministry, who earlier served as envoy to India, took to Twitter to wish the people of India on the occasion of 'Vijaya Dashami' or 'Dussehra'.

In the tweet, he announced that Jaishankar would be travelling to Israel. In August, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi had spoken with Bennett, the two leaders had agreed that there's potential to expand cooperation between the two nations and had decided that the foreign ministries of the two countries would work on preparing a roadmap for enriching the India-Israel strategic partnership.

Modi even invited Bennett to visit India as 2022 would mark the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between e two nations. Israel and India had established full diplomatic relations on January 29, 1992.

Modi had visited Israel in July of 2017, marking the first visit by an Indian PM to Israel in 70 years.

The two countries have partnerships across sectors-from agriculture and innovation to defence and security. Bilateral trade touched $5 billion in 2020-21, according to a note of the ministry of external affairs (MEA).