Israel and Kenya should work hand-in-hand against terrorism, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in Nairobi on Tuesday during the second leg of a four-nation Africa tour.
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Exactly four decades after his brother was killed at the Entebbe Airport in Uganda, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyau is back in Africa as he starts the first visit by an Israeli leader to sub-Saharan Africa since 1987.
In turn, African leaders have visited Israel in recent years, including Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta and Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
Netanyahu, welcomed at the airport by Rwandan President Paul Kagame, later visited the Kigali Memorial Center, where more than 250,000 victims of the at least 800,000 victims of the 1994 genocide are buried in mass graves.
Tanzania has been attacked by islamist terrorists in the past while South Sudan is still trying to detach itself from a horrendous civil conflict.
He said, “Exactly 40 years ago Israeli soldiers carried out the historic mission in Entebbe. This will have an impact in Africa now, but I think that it will have very considerable effect regarding Israel’s global relations in the future, vis-à-vis our effort to bring about a very great number of countries that support Israel”, he said. “The relationship between Africa, Uganda and Israel is being born this day”.
“I’m very open about it, that’s true”, Netanyahu said, according to the paper.
“It might take a decade, but we will change the automatic majority against Israel”.
Netanyahu is the first ruling Israeli prime minister to visit Kenya and the first to visit sub-Saharan Africa in almost three decades. Netanyahu made his remarks during his visit to Africa, on a flight from Uganda to Kenya, in conversation with reporters accompanying the trip.
The two-hour meeting focused on ways to scale up cooperation between the African countries and Israel on issues of security and economic development.
The Israeli prime minister later told reporters his trip is about rebuilding ties with Africa.
He said the leaders appreciated the invitation and hospitality accorded to them and their delegations by President Museveni and they looked forward to other bilateral and regional cooperation between African countries and Israel.
As a key USA ally on regional security, especially in violence-prone Somalia, Uganda is an attractive ally for Israel as well, according to Mr. Izama.
“Israel has been on a mission to fix its image globally and more specifically within the United Nations where the Africa group has for decades now supported the Palestinian cause, and vote in general toward that end”, said Angelo Izama, a Ugandan analyst who runs a think tank called Fana Kwawote.
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“Terrorism continues to be a threat to the world”.
