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President of Muslim-Majority Chad Arrives in Israel
(Ha'aretz-Jerusalem Post) Noa Landau - Idriss Deby, the president of the Republic of Chad, a Muslim-majority African country, met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday in Jerusalem as part of an official visit to Israel. Sources in Chad told Reuters that Israel has supplied the Chadian army with weaponry and other equipment this year to help in its fight against northern rebels. Dr. Dore Gold, president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and former director general of Israel's Foreign Ministry, met with Deby in 2016 and said on Sunday that "Chad is a very important country in Africa and has great significance as a positive and stabilizing power in the region....Chad once had diplomatic relations with Israel and severed them in 1972. When I asked the president's assistants why it did so, they said it was because of strong pressure by [former Libyan leader] Qaddafi. Today, there's no Qaddafi, so it's possible for relations to progress."