Israel in Africa. Yotam Gidron
from the African perspective, Israel’s scope of involvement and impact are understandably viewed as marginal when compared to those of powers like China, the US or even European countries. Language barriers, overt secrecy and the fact that Israel has no articulated and publicly available ‘Africa policy’ or a coherent international development agenda are some other factors that render engagement with the topic challenging. Thus, with Israeli scholars and students of the Middle East detached from contemporary African debates and concerns or simply viewing them as entirely inconsequential, and with a preponderance of Africanists reluctant to deal with the messy politics of the Middle East and Israel/Palestine or simply unfamiliar with them,5 Israeli–African relationships seem to be no one’s focus. Structurally, as in the case of other cross-regional engagements, this neglect is also a consequence of the division between the Area Studies of the Middle East and Africa in academic institutions and the popular perception of these regions as largely separated from one another.6
But this neat division is uncomfortably artificial. Israel shares a land border with Africa: a line in the sand which was first negotiated between Britain and the Ottoman Empire over a century ago. It has a port on the Red Sea. It has been the destination of several significant waves of migration from Africa throughout its history. Perhaps more crucially, it has often sought to project its influence into the continent – far beyond its immediate neighbours – in order to safeguard its interests and undermine its adversaries. While it is true that Africa was never as central in Israel’s international strategy as were its relationships with Western states or with other Middle Eastern countries, the neighbouring continent in general, and its north-eastern countries in particular, have repeatedly featured in Jerusalem’s foreign policy calculations.
And this interest was not one-sided, or uninfluential, or limited to a small group of political or military elites. From imperial and later socialist Ethiopia, through post-independence Uganda and Sudan, apartheid South Africa, Zaire and later the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and all the way to contemporary Togo, South Sudan, Angola, Rwanda and Equatorial Guinea, African actors sought Israel’s support and Israel’s involvement has been highly significant. In some cases, it played a critical role in determining the trajectories of conflicts and the survival or rise to power of leaders. In recent years, Israeli–African (often clandestine) collaboration on migration management has impacted on the lives of tens of thousands of people. Support for Israel is an increasingly important theme in many evangelical churches in Africa, while the Palestinian cause remains a central concern for the Arab world and human rights groups.
There is a considerable body of literature that deals with the more distant history of Israel in Africa. Several studies have been written on Israel’s involvement in Africa from the late 1950s and until the mid-1970s, focusing primarily on its technical assistance programmes and on the decision of most African countries to break ties with Israel during the Israeli–Arab war of 1973.7 A few Israelis who worked in Africa during the 1960s also wrote illuminating memoirs.8 Israel’s alliance with apartheid South Africa and the slow restoration of ties with some African countries during the 1980s also attracted attention, but as Israel’s interests in the continent declined after the end of the Cold War, so did the scholarly interest in what Israel and Israelis do in Africa.9 In recent years, Israeli involvement in Africa during the 1960s has attracted some renewed academic attention, primarily from Israeli scholars.10 This resulted in several studies that are more critical and evidence-based than much of the older literature on the same period, but which unavoidably also further entrenched the notion that Israeli–African partnerships are largely a thing of the past.
This book seeks to contribute to the existing debates and literature in two ways. First, by presenting a new history of the interplay between conflicts, violence and processes of state formation in Israel/Palestine and in the African continent. Second, by critically examining Israel’s growing interest in and engagement with African countries over the past decade. The following chapters therefore aim to answer a set of interlinked questions: Why and how did Israel attempt to project its influence into Africa? What is behind the new Israeli ‘love’ for the continent? What developments in Africa and the Middle East brought about this new phase in the history of Israel in Africa, and what may the engagement between Israel and African countries mean for both the Middle East and Africa? How does Israel’s longer history of involvement in Africa inform and influence its current rhetoric and activities? And finally, how did African leaders respond to Israel’s forays, and why?
Securitisation, privatisation and states
From its independence in 1948, Israel was engaged in protracted conflicts and constantly saw itself – rightly or not – as facing existential threats.11 As historian Avi Shlaim shows, all Israeli governments since the country’s independence were guided by the conviction that Jewish sovereignty in the Middle East can only be guaranteed through force and deterrence, by making Israel so powerful that its adversaries will view it as unbreakable and, once sufficiently repressed and overpowered, give up their resistance to it.12 Shlaim calls this strategy ‘The Iron Wall’ – a reference to a hawkish doctrine first formulated by Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky in the 1920s and subsequently followed by generations of Israeli leaders regardless of their political leanings. One central argument advanced in this book is that Israel’s relationship with Africa should be understood as driven by the same rationale: in Africa, Israel repeatedly sought political and military alliances or influence that can be leveraged to pressure, weaken, undermine and deter its rivals in the Middle East.
Israel’s forays into Africa therefore consistently reflected its conflicts in the Middle East. From the late 1950s, the continent was the site of intense political and military competition between Israel and the Arab world (primarily Egypt). Israel largely lost this battle during the 1973 Israeli–Arab war, when most African countries severed diplomatic relations with it. After Israel and Egypt signed a peace agreement in 1979, the urgency of guaranteeing African support declined, and the Israeli–Egyptian rivalry in Africa was slowly replaced with the much less militarised Israeli–Palestinian one. After Israel began to negotiate with the Palestinians, and following the Israeli–Jordanian peace agreement in the 1990s, Africa lost much of its strategic importance from the Israeli perspective. However, following the collapse of the Israeli–Palestinian peace process in the early 2000s and as Israel’s international isolation grew again, it slowly began to ‘return’ to the continent, once again seeking alliances that would weaken its rivals in the Middle East. If previous rounds of Israeli–Arab/Palestinian competition in Africa were intertwined in global Cold War dynamics, today the battle takes place within the context of the ‘war on terror’, the growing popularity of born-again Christian and reformist Islamic movements, and the renewed geostrategic interest of both Gulf and Asian powers in Africa.
Securitised international objectives also influenced the evolution and workings of Israeli state institutions. Since Israel’s international strategy was always considered and presented as a matter of state or regime survival, the security sector came to dominate it and civilian institutions or bureaucracies, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, were regularly bypassed or obstructed. The military was always the most influential and respected institution in the Israeli polity, and Israeli society was always obsessed with security and defence. As the country grew older, however, and particularly since the wars of 1967 and 1973, the distinction between its military elite and civilian leadership became increasingly blurred, as former security personnel and generals began to occupy a growing number of senior positions in the government, state institutions, parastatals, the arms industry and, more recently, the closely linked high-tech industry. Ultimately, they formed what Sheffer and Barak called a ‘security network’ – a powerful group of like-minded security-oriented people that transcends formal institutions and shapes Israel’s international strategy and national priorities.13
From an early stage, the security sector was deeply involved in Israel’s Africa diplomacy, often dealing with issues that are not directly related to defence, such as propaganda or migration management. This matters not only because it indicates what Israel’s priorities in Africa are and the extent to which its foreign strategy is shaped by its defence interests, but also because it determines which Israeli institutions interact with African states and peoples and how they operate. As opposed