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WorldChad to open embassy in Israel on Thursday, says Israeli PM

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Chad to open embassy in Israel on Thursday, says Israeli PM

Following a trip to Jerusalem by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-President Idriss Deby, diplomatic relations between Israel and Chad were restored in 2018.

Building on bilateral ties that were established five years ago, Chad will open an embassy in Israel on Thursday, according to the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The announcement was made on Wednesday as Chadian President Mahamat Deby’s office announced that he was visiting Israel for a 48-hour state visit but gave no other information.

The Chadian president would preside over the opening of the embassy, according to Netanyahu’s office.

Chad cut diplomatic ties with Israel in 1972 after the Organization of African Unity, the forerunner of the present-day African Union, ordered its member states to do so in support of the Palestinians.

But in November 2018, former Chadian President Idriss Deby, the late father of the current leader, paid a historic visit to Israel during which he spoke of the two countries committing to a new era of cooperation.

Netanyahu then visited Chad in January 2019, while the following year Israel signed normalisation agreements with Morocco, Bahrain, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates as part of a broader diplomatic push by the United States under President Donald Trump.

The agreements enraged Palestinians who condemned them as a “stab in the back” amid fears that they will weaken a long-standing pan-Arab position calling for Israeli withdrawal from territories it occupies illegally and acceptance of Palestinian statehood in return for normal ties with Arab countries.

It was not immediately clear where the Chadian embassy would be located. Most countries keep embassies in Tel Aviv.

Trump in 2017 provoked controversy by announcing he would relocate the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and officially did so a year later. The move infuriated Palestinians and spurred international condemnation.

Previous US presidents and the leaders of nearly every other country have refrained from opening embassies in Jerusalem until the city’s final status is resolved through Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Palestinian leaders see occupied East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.

Netanyahu, who returned to office last month, has cast the upgrade of relations with Chad as part of his outreach to Arab and Muslim countries, which he wants to expand.

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