Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Co-operation, Mr Bernard MembeThe government has said that it remains committed to the Palestinian liberation struggle, despite maintaining diplomatic relations with Israel.
Speaking to the ‘Sunday News’, an official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation said recently that the diplomatic relations have existed for a long time. “Tanzania maintains a consular office in Tel Aviv, while our embassy in Egypt takes care of all diplomatic affairs,” said the official.
He also said that the Israeli embassy in Kenya coordinates all the diplomacy between Tanzania and Israel. “The country’s political stance as far as the occupation of Israel remains clear that we continue to support a two-state solution that will see two states existing side by side in the Middle East,” said the official.
Reports from Zanzibar and some sections of the community in the mainland Tanzania show that there is a growing concern on the open diplomacy which has emerged between Israel and Tanzania in recent years. According to the sources in Zanzibar, Ambassador Seif Ali Iddi’s recent visit to Tel-Aviv was highly criticized.
The sources said that many people wanted to know government’s stance on the independence of Palestine. The ambassador recently flew to Israel where he visited some Zanzibar patient’s who had gone to undertake medical treatment.
According to a press statement from the press secretary of the 2VP, a team of heart specialists from an Israel hospital will be flying to Zanzibar to study and diagnose possible causes of heart problems in at least one-thousand children of Zanzibar.
“We have planned to send a team of doctors in September this year to come, check and study the problems causing heart problems in Zanzibari children between the age of five and fifteen,” said Ambassador Ali. According to a survey, Zanzibar had the biggest number of child heart patients compared to other African countries.
The heart specialist said that rheumatic fever was also associated with heart problem and that the mission in Zanzibar would include organizing capacity building seminars for Zanzibar medical doctors. Israel has so far treated 300 Zanzibari children with heart complications since year 2000. “Israel has been a great friend of Zanzibar,” the Zanzibar’s 2VP said.
According to the release, Seif visited six children from Tanzania currently being treated in Israel. The children were identified as Abdullhafidh Masoud Mambo, Harith Othman Khamis, Hadhir Hassan. Others were Ali, Ntumwa Sheikh, Khadija Shame and Suleiman Ramadhan from Zanzibar and Julius Benard from Mwanza, Tanzania Mainland.
Source Tanzania Daily News
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