Army chief Gen MM Naravane left for Israel on November 14 on a five-day maiden visit to further strengthen India's defence and security cooperation with the country.

During the visit, he will be meeting the country’s senior military and civilian leadership where he will discuss avenues for further enhancing Indo-Israel defence relations. 

The visit by the Army chief to Israel comes weeks after Minister of External Affairs S Jaishankar and defence secretary Ajay Kumar travelled to Tel Aviv. 

India-Israel defence cooperation

• India and Israel are strategic partners.

• India and Israel have established bilateral consultation mechanisms in all sectors of collaboration, including water, agriculture, counter-terrorism, and defence. 

• India imports critical defence technologies from Israel. There are regular exchanges between the armed forces. 

• In reflection of growing bilateral defence ties, India and Israel last month agreed to form a task force to develop a 10-year strategy for identifying new areas of collaboration in the defence sector.

• The two countries have inked an agreement to jointly develop next-generation technologies and products such as drones, robotics, artificial intelligence and quantum computing.

• India has been a major buyer of Israel’s military hardware. Israel has been supplying various weapon systems, missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles to India over the last few years. 

In February 2014, India and Israel signed three agreements:

• Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters

• Agreement on Cooperation in Homeland and Public Security

• Agreement on Protection of Classified Material.

• Under the agreement on Cooperation in Homeland and Public Security, four working groups in the areas of border management, internal security and public safety, police modernisation and capacity building for combating crime, crime prevention and cybercrime were established.

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