OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: Chadian President Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno on Thursday opened his majority-Muslim country’s first embassy in Israel, four years after the countries renewed ties following a decades-long rupture, an Israeli statement said. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office called the embassy’s inauguration in Ramat Gan near Tel Aviv “a historic moment”.

Netanyahu said in 2020 that he had discussed “the possibility of opening an embassy in Jerusalem” with a Chadian delegation. That would have been a coup for the right-winger who has been pressing foreign governments to set up their embassies in the city, since then president Donald Trump moved the US embassy in 2018.