New Delhi, February 25 – Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Israel for a two-day state visit, where he will hold extensive discussions with his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, and also address the Israeli Parliament, the Knesset – the first time an Indian Prime Minister has done so.
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu received Prime Minister Modi at the Tel Aviv airport, as he did during his last visit in July 2017, and the two leaders are expected to engage in various forums over the next two days, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi's address to the Knesset, a private dinner, a visit to the Holocaust museum, an address to the Indian diaspora, and more.
The visit has been described as historic. However, the 2017 visit was also significant, as Prime Minister Modi was accompanied by his Israeli counterpart throughout the tour.
Ahead of Prime Minister Modi's second visit to Israel, which will be in 2026, after his first in 2017, here is a look at his previous engagements with Israel, which initially began as Chief Minister of Gujarat.
In May 2006, then Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, travelled to Israel for the first time, leading an Indian delegation to Agritech 2006, Israel's premier international agricultural technology exhibition. The delegation included other chief ministers and senior agricultural officials, who studied Israeli innovations in farming and water management.
According to Modi Archive, a prominent social media handle on X, then Chief Minister Narendra Modi presented Gujarat's agricultural vision at the Israel-India Business Forum under the slogan "Per Drop More Crop", and also received "maximum applause and appreciation" from the audience.
Incidentally, the "Per Drop More Crop" slogan later became the motto of the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana, India's national micro-irrigation scheme.
Eleven years later, in 2017, Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Israel, marking the first bilateral visit by an Indian Prime Minister.
"The agricultural theme that had run through 2006 continued in this visit as well," informs the Modi Archive.
It says that the first stop of Prime Minister Modi and Netanyahu during this trip was a flower farm, where Israel's leading flower genetics company had developed a new white chrysanthemum for the occasion and named it "MODI."
"The 3-Year Work Programme in Agriculture signed during the visit was the formal institutionalisation of what Chief Minister Modi had personally initiated at Agritech-2006," it further states.
It adds that the Netafim relationship he had worked on as Chief Minister became a government-to-government framework as Prime Minister.
Later during his address to the Indian diaspora in Tel Aviv, Prime Minister Modi emphasised, "Israel's cooperation in the agriculture sector can help India in the second green revolution."
The visit also produced one of its defining images: Prime Minister Modi and Prime Minister Netanyahu at a demonstration of Israel's mobile water desalination technology.
The Modi Archive X handle further says that both countries have been working on the same problems from different angles. India had the scale, the farmland, and the need, while Israel had turned constraint into technique, developing drip irrigation, wastewater recycling, and desalination into systems that could be exported, replicated, and built upon.
“Chief Minister Modi had recognised in 2006 that these were exactly the techniques that Gujarat and India needed, and had come back as Prime Minister to make it a national commitment. In 2026, Prime Minister Modi returns to Israel, putting the spotlight back, keeping agriculture, water management, and food security at the core of expanding ties,” it further states.