Narendra Modi’s recent visit to Israel was staged as a triumph of “strategic partnership,” but it landed as something more cynical: political cover for an Israeli leadership facing unprecedented legal and diplomatic scrutiny.
Modi addressed the Knesset, met Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog, and wrapped the trip in the familiar vocabulary of security, technology, and trade. India and Israel pledged to deepen defence cooperation, including joint development and technology transfer, and to push toward a free trade agreement.
New arrangements on labour mobility, including expanded work visas for Indian nationals, were also part of the package.
The geopolitics are clear enough. What should haunt anyone with a memory of India’s foreign-policy tradition is the timing. Netanyahu is under an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for war crimes and crimes against humanity linked to the Gaza war. Modi chose to embrace him anyway, in front of cameras, and in the Israeli parliament. In practice, that is an endorsement, whatever the diplomatic phrasing.
This visit comes after more than two years of catastrophic violence and deprivation in Gaza. The International Court of Justice, in the genocide case brought by South Africa, found Palestinians in Gaza have plausible rights under the Genocide Convention requiring urgent protection, and ordered provisional measures aimed at preventing prohibited acts and ensuring humanitarian access.
You can argue over legal terms. You cannot argue over what the world has watched: mass killing, mass displacement, and a deliberate grinding down of civilian life.
And that is precisely why the trip mattered to Israel. Israel’s right-wing government needs proof that its isolation is not complete, that it can still pull major non-Western powers into the embrace. Modi, no doubt intentionally, helped create that image.
So what should we expect to follow from this visit?
First, a thicker security alliance sold as “counterterrorism.” The public messaging linked Israel’s narrative of 7 October 2023 with India’s own security preoccupations, including attacks in Indian-administered Kashmir. That rhetorical stitching is not accidental. It offers a moral alibi for an expanding partnership in intelligence, surveillance, and militarised policing, and it plays well with domestic audiences primed to see politics through the lens of “terror.”
Second, faster co-development and procurement. Israel is already a major arms supplier to India, and SIPRI’s data shows India has been Israel’s single largest arms customer, taking about 34% of Israel’s arms exports in 2020–24.
The new emphasis on technology transfer and joint production signals that New Delhi wants more than shopping. It wants systems, know-how, and the domestic political credit of “Made in India” defence manufacturing. Expect more joint work on drones, air and missile defence, electronic warfare, and border surveillance, the sort of tools that travel easily from Gaza to Kashmir.
Third, tighter integration in “dual-use” tech, especially cyber and AI. The visit’s agenda highlighted cooperation in emerging technologies and cybersecurity. In theory, that is innovation policy. In reality, these are also the tools through which states now map populations, predict dissent, and automate repression. In countries where civic space is already shrinking, that is not a footnote. It is the story.
Fourth, a quieter Indian posture on Palestinian rights. New Delhi will keep the language of a two-state solution, and occasionally vote for a pro-Palestinian UN text, but the centre of gravity is shifting. When you need Israeli missiles, drones, and intelligence cooperation, the Palestinian cause becomes a diplomatic paragraph rather than a policy compass.
To grasp how sharp this turn is, remember where India once stood.
In November 1947, India voted against the UN partition of Palestine. For decades afterwards, New Delhi positioned itself as a supporter of Palestinian self-determination and a close partner of Arab states. India recognised the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people and was among the first countries to recognise the State of Palestine in 1988.
That posture was rooted in anti-colonial identity and in the ethos of non-alignment, the Nehru–Nasser moment when India imagined itself as part of a Global South project of decolonisation and dignity.
Palestine was not just another “issue.” It was a moral case study. The Non-Aligned Movement was supposed to be more than refusing to choose between Washington and Moscow. It was supposed to be choosing, at least in principle, the oppressed over the coloniser.
The shift toward Israel did not begin with Modi, but he made it public, proud, and ideological. India established full diplomatic relations with Israel in 1992, in the post-Cold War era of economic liberalisation and geopolitical recalibration. Israel offered advanced military technology and security expertise, often without the human-rights conditionality that comes with Western suppliers. Over time, the relationship thickened into procurement, intelligence ties, and a shared security grammar.
Under Modi’s BJP, that partnership became something else: a worldview alliance.
India is a “partly free” democracy where the Hindu nationalist quasi-fascist BJP government has presided over discriminatory policies and increased persecution affecting Muslims, alongside intensified pressure on journalists and civil society. In that ideological climate, Israel is not only a useful supplier. It is an example and a symbol: an ethno-nationalist state that presents harsh domination over a stigmatised population as “security,” and calls it democracy.
War on Terror
This is where Islamophobia enters as connective tissue. India’s defining external rival is Pakistan, and Kashmir is the wound that never closes. Israel’s political mainstream increasingly treats Palestinians not as a people with rights but as a permanent threat. The two narratives meet in the language of “terror,” and the post-9/11 War on Terror gave that language global legitimacy.
When everything becomes “counterterrorism,” almost anything becomes permissible: exceptional laws, mass surveillance, collective punishment, and the normalisation of civilian suffering as collateral.
The political symmetries are striking. Israel’s governing coalition has relied on far-right, ultranationalist figures like Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, politicians so toxic that some European governments have sanctioned them. India is governed by a party that has mainstreamed majoritarian grievance and treats critics as enemies of the nation. Both promise national revival through the disciplining of internal “others.” Both claim democracy while hollowing out its safeguards.
That is why Modi’s Jerusalem trip should not be read as mere realpolitik. It is the foreign-policy projection of a domestic project. If your politics is built on identifying an internal enemy, you will be drawn to international allies who have perfected the method.
There is also strategic self-harm. India wants Gulf markets, energy security, and regional influence. It wants to speak for the Global South. A posture of warmth toward Israel at the height of Gaza’s devastation undermines India’s credibility among Arab publics and postcolonial societies that still see Palestine as the litmus test for whether international law is real or selective.
So why do it?
Because Modi has decided that arms, intelligence cooperation, and tech alignment are worth the reputational cost. The backlash can be managed with careful UN votes and ritual nods to peace.
At home, closeness to Israel plays well with a base primed to view Muslims through a securitised lens. Abroad, it signals to Washington that India is a dependable partner in a regional order that treats Palestinian rights as negotiable.
But history returns. India once built soft power on anti-colonial solidarity and an instinct for the underdog. If it trades that away for drones and algorithms, it will find itself richer in hardware and poorer in legitimacy.
Modi’s visit is a milestone because it makes the choice explicit. India has decided which side of the global moral argument it wants to be seen on. That is not pragmatism. It is a confession.
Hossam el-Hamalawy is an Egyptian scholar-activist in Germany, focusing on the military, policing, and labour.
Follow Hossam on X: @3arabawy
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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab.