Meeting with Modi is a long due union of hearts and minds says Benjamin Netanyahu

Israeli Prime Minister benjamin Netanyahu said he was looking to cooperate with India in every possible way, and had accepted Modi’s invitation to visit the country this year.

Updated on: Jul 6, 2017, 08:42:07 IST

Hindustan Times, Jerusalem | By Shishir Gupta, JERUSALEM

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called his meeting with Indian counterpart Narendra Modi a union of hearts and minds that was long due, and said the promising partnership between the two countries can seize the future.

Jerusalem : Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, left, listens as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during their meeting at the King David hotel in Jerusalem, Wednesday, July 5, 2017. (AP Photo)

In an interview with Hindustan Times on Wednesday, Netanyahu said he was looking to cooperate with India in every possible way, and had accepted Modi’s invitation to visit the country this year.

“I said it’s almost impossible to understand what took you so long for the meeting of hearts and minds…,” the 67-year-old leader said from his hotel room overlooking the Temple Mount, one of the holiest sites of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

He said India was the first democracy he sees when he turns his head right just as Modi would see Israel as the first democratic country if he turned his head left.

During the Cold War, India didn’t have open relations with Israel, leaning heavily in favour of the Palestinians. But over the past quarter century, the countries have developed close ties in high-tech and defence, and Modi is the first Indian prime minister to visit Israel.

“We are eager to have cooperative ventures between our entrepreneurs and our technologists and India’s wonderful storehouse of human talent,” Netanyahu said.

In the 30-minute interview, he also spoke on cooperation in fighting terrorism, exchange of intelligence and emerging geo-political realities in West Asia.

Read the full interview here.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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