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Kampala - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has started a four-country Africa trip with a stop in Uganda, where a daring Israeli rescue mission led by his brother 40 years ago played a pivotal role in launching his political career.
Netanyahu is trying to drum up business for Israeli companies during a visit that will also take him to Kenya, Ethiopia and Rwanda. With a delegation of 70 business executives, the African excursion is part of Netanyahu’s effort to cultivate growth markets while economies languish in the country’s biggest trade partners, the US and the European Union.
He called the first trip by an Israeli prime minister to sub-Saharan Africa in 29 years “historic.
“Israel is coming back to Africa, big time,” he said. In a Facebook post earlier he said the visit was “important to us diplomatically, economically and in terms of security.”
Companies sending executives with Netanyahu include Elbit Systems, the country’s biggest publicly traded defence contractor; Netafim, which makes irrigation systems; Magal Security Systems, a specialist in perimeter security at airports; Israel Chemicals, a fertiliser producer and dronemaker Aeronautics.
Long history
While Netanyahu touts Israeli technology, particularly in the fields of anti-terrorism, desalination and solar energy, he also has a clear diplomatic agenda.
He is also pushing for open political support from African countries that have largely sided with Arab nations on resolutions critical of Israel in the United Nations and African Union. Israel also has a common cause with some African countries in battling radical Islamists.
Netanyahu called for a united international front against terrorism at a ceremony at Uganda’s Entebbe airport, where his older brother, Yonatan, died on July 4 1976, leading a raid to free more than 100 Jewish and Israeli hostages aboard an Air France flight seized by Palestinian and German hijackers.
The Ugandan president at the time, Idi Amin, openly supported the hijackers demanding the release of Palestinian militants in Israeli prisons and prisoners in other countries.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni thanked Netanyahu for turning “a sad story 40 years ago into yet another instrument of bonding the Holy Land, Israel-Palestine, with the heartlands of Uganda in Africa and Africa in general.”
Netanyahu is to meet in Uganda with the leaders of seven African states as Israel revives a long history of ties with the continent built on exports of arms and agricultural products and imports of oil, diamonds and other natural resources.
Alliances unraveled after many African states severed ties to avoid entanglement in the Arab oil embargo following the 1973 Middle East war. Ties grew closer again over the threat of radical Islam and Israel’s outreach beyond its traditional Western allies.
