Netanyahu is expected to announce a diplomatic breakthrough today with a country in the region, whose leader he is meeting in Uganda.
By LAHAV HARKOVPrime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara boarding the plane to Uganda(photo credit: HAIM ZACH/GPO)
Israel may get good news today, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said before boarding a flight to Entebbe, Uganda on Monday, where he will meet a leader from the region in addition to Ugandan President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni.Netanyahu is expected to announce an upgrade in ties with a state with which Israel does not have diplomatic relations later in the day. Mossad Chief Yossi Cohen was on the flight with Netanyahu.“Today I am going to Uganda. We are strengthening the connection with this country. I hope that at the end of the day we will have very good news for the State of Israel,” he said.The Prime Minister’s Office has not confirmed any details of the visit and the IDF has censored reports on the matter.Netanyahu said on the tarmac at Ben-Gurion airport that this is his fifth visit to Africa in the past three-and-a-half years.“Israel is returning to Africa in a big way; Africa already returned to Israel,” the prime minister stated. “These are very important ties for diplomacy, for the economy, for security and more will be revealed.”Sources in Uganda’s Evangelical Christian community told The Jerusalem Post last week the country will announce having its embassy in Jerusalem during Netanyahu’s trip.Ugandan President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni is an Evangelical Christian.If Uganda opens an embassy in Jerusalem, it will be the third country to do so, following the US and Guatemala.However, reports the country plans to open an embassy in Jerusalem are false, Ugandan Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Ministry Patrick Mugova told local media.
Kampala does not have a mission to Israel, while Israel has a visa processing office in the Ugandan capital.Netanyahu last visited Uganda in 2016 to hold a seven-country summit and to mark the 40th anniversary of the raid on Entebbe, in which his brother Yoni Netanyahu, the operation’s commander, was killed.
