Kenya President Irks Palestinians With Visit to West Bank Settlement

Image by Getty Images
Kenya’s president was validating Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem with his visits there on his first official trip to Israel, Palestinian leaders said.
Palestinian official Hanan Ashrawi said Thursday that the Palestinians plan to complain to the African Union and other regional organizations about Uhuru Kenyatta’s trip this week, The Associated Press reported. Kenyatta did not visit any Palestinian cities, further roiling the Palestinians.
“This is an important foreign visit that was planned long ago,” Israel’s Foreign Ministry said, according to Army Radio citing the Times of Israel. “The request to visit Ramallah was filed at the last minute and unfortunately there is no way to approve it.”
Kenyatta, who arrived in Israel on Monday for a three-day state visit, was making the first trip by a Kenyan president since Daniel Moi in 1994, according to The Jerusalem Post.
In the West Bank, Kenyatta went to a kibbutz on the Dead Sea where Kenyan students are participating in an irrigation training program. He also went to the Western Wall, in the eastern part of Jerusalem, which Israel conquered in the Six-Day War.
Kenyatta and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed agreements on irrigation and agriculture, strengthening already solid ties between the countries. According to Kenya’s The Daily Nation, the two nations also committed to joint security training.
Israel also agreed to consider a proposal to bring in more Kenyan workers, The Daily Nation reported. Kenya’s ambassador to Israel, Agostino Njoroge, told the publication that the number of Kenyan workers in Israel has dropped to 200 from 2,000 in the past 10 years as a result of Israel’s tougher immigration laws and security concerns.
Kenya is seeking an agreement to have recruitment agencies contract Kenyan workers for short stints in the Jewish state and also wants to increase the number of Kenyan students undergoing agricultural training in Israel.
The Daily Nation said the Israeli government is funding free training for 100 Kenyans in irrigation engineering in Israel.
Kenyatta’s spokesperson did not immediately respond to the AP’s request for comment about the Palestinians.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a Passover gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Most Popular
- 1
News Student protesters being deported are not ‘martyrs and heroes,’ says former antisemitism envoy
- 2
News Who is Alan Garber, the Jewish Harvard president who stood up to Trump over antisemitism?
- 3
Politics Meet America’s potential first Jewish second family: Josh Shapiro, Lori, and their 4 kids
- 4
Fast Forward Suspected arsonist intended to beat Gov. Josh Shapiro with a sledgehammer, investigators say
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Jewish students, alumni decry ‘weaponization of antisemitism’ across country
-
Opinion I first met Netanyahu in 1988. Here’s how he became the most destructive leader in Israel’s history
-
Opinion Why can Harvard stand up to Trump? Because it didn’t give in to pro-Palestinian student protests
-
Culture How an Israeli dance company shaped a Catholic school boy’s life
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.