Israel will host Narendra Modi on February 25 in what will be a landmark moment in bilateral diplomacy: the Indian Prime Minister is set to address the Knesset, making him the first sitting Indian head of government to do so, as reported by The Hindu.
The visit carries weight well beyond a standard state call. India has for decades maintained a carefully calibrated posture on the Israel-Palestine question — formally recognizing the Palestinian state, supporting a two-state solution, and historically voting alongside Arab nations at the United Nations, while simultaneously deepening security and technology ties with Israel that accelerated sharply after full diplomatic normalization in 1992. That balancing act has never been fully resolved; it has simply been managed. A Knesset address by a sitting Indian Prime Minister makes the tightrope visible in a way that no previous diplomatic exchange has.
Modi visited Israel in 2017 — the first-ever visit by an Indian Prime Minister — deliberately decoupling it from any simultaneous trip to Ramallah, a symbolic break from decades of Indian protocol that had treated the two as inseparable. The upcoming visit continues that trajectory, arriving at a moment of particular diplomatic sensitivity: the Gaza ceasefire framework, brokered through Qatar and Egypt with heavy American involvement, has created a fragile pause in the conflict that began with the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks. India abstained on several UN resolutions critical of Israeli military operations in Gaza, drawing criticism from Arab and Muslim-majority nations but signaling to Jerusalem that New Delhi's traditional non-alignment still left room for pragmatic accommodation.
For the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Modi visit offers something increasingly valuable: diplomatic engagement from a major non-Western democracy at a moment when Israel's relationships with traditional European allies have been strained by disagreements over international humanitarian law and the scale of civilian casualties in Gaza. India, with its 1.4 billion population, its permanent-member aspirations at the UN Security Council, and its standing as the world's largest democracy, is not a marginal partner. Its willingness to maintain and publicly celebrate ties with Israel carries geopolitical signal.
In Israel, as across contested regions, security concerns and aspirations for normalcy exist in constant tension. The India-Israel defence relationship is a case study in how that tension plays out on the strategic level. Israel has been one of India's largest arms suppliers for over two decades, providing surveillance drones, air defence systems, and precision munitions that have featured in India's confrontations with Pakistan and its management of the Kashmir conflict. Israeli technology has also shaped India's intelligence architecture. That relationship did not pause during the Gaza war — a fact that has drawn scrutiny from human rights organizations tracking weapons flows.
The Knesset address itself is a carefully chosen diplomatic instrument. It places Modi on a platform shared by very few foreign leaders and carries symbolic equivalence to a joint session of the US Congress or a speech to the British Parliament. Israeli officials will note the gesture prominently. Palestinian leaders and Arab governments will note it too — and draw their own conclusions about where India's center of gravity is shifting.
India's government has framed the visit in the language of longstanding friendship and shared democratic values. Israeli officials have welcomed it as affirmation of Israel's legitimacy and international standing during a difficult period. Neither framing is entirely wrong, and neither captures the full architecture of what is being negotiated in this encounter.
The Abraham Accords — which normalized relations between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan — represented a regional recalibration in which Gulf states decided their strategic interests aligned more closely with Israel than their stated positions on Palestine had suggested. India's trajectory is different but rhymes: a democracy with a large Muslim minority population and a Muslim-majority neighbor managing a complex relationship with Israel that its public posture has not always fully reflected.
The February 25 address will be watched closely — by Israeli coalition partners who want it as a political win, by Palestinian leadership in Ramallah who will demand Modi reaffirm support for statehood, by India's opposition who will frame it through domestic communal politics, and by Gulf states recalibrating their own post-ceasefire diplomacy. A parliamentary speech is rarely just a speech. In this case, it is a signal about which direction one of the world's largest powers is pointing.
