JERUSALEM (AP) – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu heads to Africa this week, where Israel has found much-needed partners in the battle against Islamic militants and allies in countering the rising Palestinian influence at the United Nations.
Netanyahu will also visit the site where his brother was killed in a 1976 military raid on a hijacked airliner in Uganda, a seminal event that helped cement his hard-line ideology.
Israel is hoping that the visit – the first by an Israeli premier to sub-Saharan Africa in three decades – will usher in a new era in which it provides African states with security and agricultural assistance in return for support in international forums.
Israel has a long history of involvement in Africa, sending experts in agriculture and development, as well as military advisers and mercenaries, over the years.
Netanyahu’s visit caps a budding rapprochement in recent years initiated by Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who, as foreign minister a few years ago, toured the continent on two occasions after no Israeli foreign minister had visited in two decades.