Israel in Africa. Yotam Gidron
neutral statement on the Israeli–Arab conflict, calling for a ‘just solution of the Palestine question’.60 At the first conference of the All-African Peoples Organisation, which convened in Accra in December the same year, the Israeli–Arab conflict was kept off the agenda, to Israel’s relief. At this point, some argue, Israel still benefited from the ‘rivalry for continental leadership’ between Nasser and Nkrumah.61 When the Second Conference of Independent African States was convened in Addis Ababa in June 1960, it merely expressed its ‘concern’ that the Bandung and Accra declarations and the UN resolutions on Palestine were not implemented.62
But it was not long before Israel was embroiled in continental power struggles that it initially wished to avoid. In January 1961, the leaders of Ghana, Mali, Guinea, Morocco and the United Arab Republic (comprising of Egypt and Syria) convened in Casablanca against the background of the political crisis in Congo. Israel already had formal relations with Ghana, Mali and Guinea at the time. At Egypt’s behest, one of the topics discussed in Casablanca was the Israeli–Arab conflict, and the leaders adopted a resolution in which they denounced ‘Israel an instrument in the service of imperialism and neo-colonialism not only in the Middle East but also in Africa and Asia’.63
As a response to the so-called ‘Casablanca Group’, Senegal, Nigeria and Togo sponsored a conference in Monrovia in which 20 African states participated. The ‘Monrovia states’ were not necessarily more pro-Israel (among them were Somalia, Libya and Mauritania, none of which had relations with Israel) but at the conference they avoided the Israeli–Arab issue altogether for the sake of African unity, a position that ultimately served Israel. Due to the opposition of the Monrovia group, the issue also remained largely off the agenda of the OAU – established in Addis Ababa in 1963 – in its early years.64 By delicately avoiding the Israeli–Arab issue, non-Arab African leaders could maintain ties with both sides and often benefit from both sides’ assistance.
Keeping the OAU unconcerned with the Middle East conflict was useful for Israel, but it was at the UN that its battle for legitimacy mattered the most. Israelis did not hide the fact that they needed African votes at the UN and that they expected African leaders to support them on the diplomatic Israeli–Arab battlefield. On this front, however, Israeli efforts in Africa had mixed results, and whether or not they can be seen as a success depends very much on how one defines success in this context. African countries as a unified bloc never fully backed Israel, and the support of many of Israel’s friends in Africa usually did not extend beyond a polite abstention in votes on Israel-related resolutions. But the existence of a significant number of states that were not necessarily allied with the Arab side still strengthened Israel’s position and allowed it to obstruct Arab initiatives and, in particular, to undermine Arab attempts to pressure it by promoting the right of return of Palestinian refugees.65
In many cases, however, Israel found that strong influence over leaders in Africa did not necessarily translate into diplomatic support from the representatives of these leaders in New York. African delegates at the UN were not necessarily acting under clear orders from the political leadership back home and often decided how to vote independently.66 This did not serve Israel well, given the Israeli focus on fostering close ties with local elites in Africa. Moreover, support for Israel had to be balanced with support for Arab states, some of which were also members of the OAU, and the assistance Israel offered African countries was never significant enough to convince them to abandon their commitments to these countries or to stand in direct opposition to them. Ultimately, even those countries that enjoyed the greatest amounts of Israeli support were reluctant to stand by Israel at the UN.
But just as African countries were balancing their support for Israel with support for the Arab world, so Israel was trying to balance its support for African countries with support for the West. Its voting record in the UN therefore often placed it in opposition to African interests and undermined its efforts on the continent. In November 1959, for instance, Ghana initiated a UN resolution requesting France to refrain from conducting nuclear tests in the Sahara. Israel was already developing its own nuclear programme at the time, and France was its main ally and arms supplier. It voted with France, and against several African nations.67 During the political crisis in Congo in 1960, Israel again stood with the West, despite opposition from some Israeli diplomats in Africa who warned that this would have damaging consequences.68 As Ali Mazrui observed, ‘Israel, sometimes genuinely interested in identifying with the liberation forces in Africa, nevertheless found herself supporting those against whom African fighters were waging a struggle’.69
The main exception in this context was Israel’s position on South Africa. During the 1960s Israel was vocal and consistent in its opposition to apartheid. Along with African governments, it repeatedly condemned Pretoria at the UN, and made sure that its position on the matter was known to its African allies. More discreetly, so as not to damage its relationships in the West, Israel also established ties with, and extended symbolic assistance to, African liberation movements from southern Africa and the Portuguese colonies, including the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) of South Africa, the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) and the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO).70 While many Israeli politicians genuinely opposed apartheid and colonial rule on moral grounds and invoked the long Jewish history of marginalisation and discrimination as a justification for this position, Israel also hoped that its vocal opposition to South Africa’s policies and low-key support for African liberation movements would convince African leaders that Jerusalem was, after all, on their side.
An African adventure
The decade of 1957 to 1966 has often been described as the ‘honeymoon’ or ‘golden age’ of African–Israeli relations. And the strategic and material interests that were the driving force behind this romance notwithstanding, one reason that this period was cherished in Israeli memory is that Israeli engagement with African countries was closely linked to the urge of the Zionist elites to reimagine their own identity vis-à-vis their surroundings and neighbours. On the one hand, Israeli rhetoric in Africa portrayed Israel as a postcolonial nation and Zionism as a liberation movement, associating Israel with other young nations of the ‘Third World’ and rejecting the comparison between Zionism and imperialism. On the other hand, as Yacobi and Bar-Yosef argue, Zionist perceptions of Africa were heavily influenced by late colonial ideas about progress and civilisation and consistently stressed the differences between Israel and African countries.71 Israel’s position as a ‘donor’ and a model not only highlighted the inequality between Israel and African countries in terms of development and wealth but also positioned Israel as part of the ‘modern’ world, in contrast to Africa.72
In terms of the Israeli institutions involved, a major role was played by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Israeli security agencies (the military and the Mossad) and companies that took part in joint ventures with African governments. Israeli engagement therefore not only focused on state-building and state-led development but was also of a highly formal and state-centric nature. By the second half of the 1960s, tensions and disagreements between Israeli civilian institutions, private entrepreneurs and security agencies emerged, as diplomats began to feel that the activities of the latter two groups of actors were getting out of control. ‘With no objective justification, a security empire has been erected in Africa’, an Israeli official protested in 1966 to Abba Eban, then Israel’s new foreign minister. ‘This interferes with work, foments turmoil, and creates great political risk.’73 In the following years, however, events in the Middle East and Africa slowly shifted the balance of power much further away from the state’s civilian institutions and into the hands of both formal and informal security and business entrepreneurs.
Among the many African leaders who heard about Israel’s technical and military assistance in the early 1960s and sought to benefit from it was a group of exiled southern Sudanese politicians. Their plan was to fight for the independence of southern Sudan: to liberate it from the Arab government in Khartoum. Their main problem