Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Meets with Zambian President Edgar Lungu
(Communicated by the Prime Minister's Media Adviser)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, this afternoon (Tuesday, 28 February
2017), in Jerusalem, met with Zambian President Edgar Lungu who is visiting
Israel accompanied by the following Zambian government ministers: Foreign
Affairs, Agriculture, Trade, Industry and Employment, Energy, Tourism, Water
Development and Environment, Transportation, and Health.

Prime Minister Netanyahu:

"I want to thank you for your friendship. It was well demonstrated in our
moving meeting in Entebbe and we've been working together to strengthen and
deepen the relations between Zambia and Israel. A year –and-a-half ago you
opened an embassy in Israel and many, many of your Ministers have visited
Israel recently and are visiting again today in fields of water,
agriculture, education and also security, defense, anti-terrorism and many,
many other areas.

We hope to send our experts to help with alternative energy, with water and
other areas that we'll discuss today. I look forward to deepening this
cooperation, which I think is important for both our countries and both our
peoples. I know that you're opening a Jewish history museum in Zambia and
soon a synagogue in the capital city. I hope one day I have the opportunity
to visit those institutions and to visit Zambia.

Zambia has undergone an amazing and admirable change in a transition to
democracy since the 90s. This offers hope, I know of your own desire to
broaden and deepen development of human capital, physical capital in Zambia.
And this is something that offers, I think, a clear direction for the
future.

And yet, the future of Zambia and the future of so many African countries is
being challenged by the rise of radical Islam and the terrorism that is
espouses, the fanaticism that it instills in young people and I think that
it's a battle between the past and the future. We firmly stand on the side
of the future, of modernity.

I just showed you, Mr. President, a relic from our past. We're very proud of
our past, our Biblical past and our modern effort to come back to our
ancient land but we seek to develop a hopeful and bright future for our
people and we are as equally committed to do that for the people of Africa.
So, I think we have to seize the future together but also work together to
defeat the forces that want to take us to a dark past.

In seizing the future, Israel is coming back to Africa in more than a verbal
way. After this visit to East Africa, I'll be going to Togo in West Africa
in a few months. There will be a summit there to discuss Israeli technology
in so many areas, in agriculture, in water, in cyber security, in every
field of technology.

I hope that we'll be able to meet once more within a few months. But in any
case, I want to assure you of our friendship and our commitment to our
relationship and that is why I welcome you on a red carpet."