The four-nation group comprising India, Israel, the United States and the UAE held their first ever summit, dubbed the I2U2, on July 14.

The virtual summit, attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Israel PM Yair Lapid, UAE President Mohammed Bin Zayed and US President Joe Biden, focussed on collaborating on food security and clean energy — bringing a 300 megawatt hybrid renewable energy project to Gujarat and UAE’s $2 billion investment to develop integrated food parks in India.

The meeting also comes at a time when India’s Adani Group acquired the Haifa Port, which is the second largest port in Israel.

Speaking to CNBC-TV18, Naor Gilon, Israel’s Ambassador to India, called the I2U2 a unique group in that neither of the four partners shares a geographical border. “But yet, there are many commonalities between the different countries and the direction they want to go in the way they want to support their people,” he said.

Gilon called UAE a wonderful link between India and Israel, because the two countries have very, very intimate relations. “In the last year or so we started building very close and intimate relations with UAE,” he added.

“Now UAE and India, of course, are very, very close to each other, especially since due to the fact that many Indians are working there, a lot of the businesses are run by Indians,” Gilon said, adding that this fact makes India-Israel-UAE a “very natural triangle”. “Israel can bring technological knowhow, UAE can bring a lot of its world connections, financing, and India can bring the size scalability, technology, manpower,” he said.

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First Published:Jul 15, 2022 7:16 PM IST