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By Ramzy Baroud
The choice by the African Union Fee, on July 22, to grant Israel observer standing membership within the AU was the fruits of years of relentless Israeli efforts aimed toward co-opting Africa’s largest political establishment. Why is Israel so eager on penetrating Africa? What made African nations lastly succumb to Israeli strain and lobbying?
To reply the above questions, one has to understand the brand new Nice Recreation underway in lots of elements of the world, particularly in Africa, which has at all times been important to Israel’s geopolitical designs. Beginning within the early Fifties to the mid-70s, Israel’s Africa community was in fixed enlargement. The 1973 warfare, nonetheless, introduced that affinity to an abrupt finish.
What Modified Africa
Ghana, in West Africa, formally acknowledged Israel in 1956, simply eight years after Israel was established atop the ruins of historic Palestine. What appeared like an odd resolution on the time – contemplating Africa’s historical past of western colonialism and anti-colonial struggles – ushered in a brand new period of African-Israeli relations. By the early Seventies, Israel had established a robust place for itself on the continent. On the eve of the 1973 Israeli-Arab warfare, Israel had full diplomatic ties with 33 African nations.
“The October Battle”, nonetheless, offered many African nations with a stark alternative: siding with Israel – a rustic born out of Western colonial intrigues – or the Arabs, who’re linked to Africa via historic, political, financial, cultural and spiritual bonds. Most African nations opted for the latter alternative. One after the opposite, African nations started severing their ties with Israel. Quickly sufficient, no African state, apart from Malawi, Lesotho and Swaziland, had official diplomatic relations with Israel.
Then, the continent’s solidarity with Palestine went even additional. The Group of African Unity – the precursor to the African Union – in its twelfth unusual session held in Kampala in 1975, turned the primary worldwide physique to acknowledge, on a big scale, the inherent racism in Israel’s Zionist ideology by adopting Decision 77 (XII). This very Decision was cited within the United Nations Normal Meeting Decision 3379, adopted in November of that very same 12 months, which decided that “Zionism is a type of racism and racial discrimination”. Decision 3379 remained in impact till it was revoked by the Meeting beneath intense American strain in 1991.
Since Israel remained dedicated to that very same Zionist, racist ideology of yesteryears, the one rational conclusion is that it was Africa, not Israel, that modified. However why?
First, the collapse of the Soviet Union. That seismic occasion resulted within the subsequent isolation of pro-Soviet African nations which, for years, stood because the vanguard in opposition to American, Western and, by extension, Israeli expansionism and pursuits on the continent.
Second, the collapse of the unified Arab entrance on Palestine. That entrance has traditionally served because the ethical and political body of reference for the pro-Palestine, anti-Israel sentiments in Africa. This began with the Egyptian authorities’s signing of the Camp David Settlement, in 1978-79 and, later, the Oslo Accords between the Palestinian management and Israel, in 1993.
Covert and overt normalization between Arab nations and Israel continued unabated during the last three a long time, ensuing within the extension of diplomatic ties between Israel and a number of other Arab nations, together with African-Arab nations, like Sudan and Morocco. Different Muslim-majority African nations additionally joined the normalization efforts. They embody Chad, Mali and others.
Third, the ‘scramble for Africa’ was renewed with a vengeance. The neocolonial return to Africa introduced again lots of the similar traditional suspects – Western nations, that are, as soon as extra, realizing the untapped potential of Africa by way of markets, low-cost labor and assets. A driving power for Western re-involvement in Africa is the rise of China as a world superpower with eager pursuits in investing in Africa’s dilapidated infrastructure. At any time when financial competitors is discovered, navy {hardware} is certain to comply with. Now a number of Western militaries are overtly working in Africa beneath numerous guises – France in Mali and the Sahel area, the US’ many operations via US Africa Command (AFRICOM), and others.
Tellingly, Washington doesn’t solely function Israel’s benefactor in Palestine and the Center East, however worldwide as effectively, and Israel is keen to go to any size to take advantage of the huge leverage it holds over the US authorities. This stifling paradigm, which has been at work within the Center East area for many years, can be at work all through Africa. For instance, final 12 months the US administration agreed to take away Sudan from the state-sponsored terror record in change for Khartoum’s normalization with Israel. In fact, Sudan will not be the one nation that understands – and is keen to interact in – this type of ‘pragmatic’ – learn under-handed – political barter. Others even have discovered to play the sport effectively. Certainly, by voting to confess Israel to the AU, some African governments count on a return on their political funding, a return that might be exacted from Washington, not from Tel Aviv.
Sadly, albeit expectedly, as Africa’s normalization with Israel grew, Palestine turned more and more a marginal situation on the agendas of many African governments, who’re much more invested in realpolitik – or just remaining on Washington’s good facet – than honoring the anti-colonial legacies of their nations.
Netanyahu the Conqueror
Nevertheless, there was one other driving power behind Israel’s resolution to ‘return’ to Africa than simply political opportunism and financial exploitation. Successive occasions have made it clear that Washington is retreating from the Center East and that the area was not a high precedence for the dwindling American empire. For the US, China’s decisive strikes to claim its energy and affect in Asia are largely chargeable for the American rethink. The 2012 US withdrawal from Iraq, its ‘management from behind’ in Libya, its non-committal coverage in Syria, amongst others, had been all indicators pointing to the inescapable incontrovertible fact that Israel may not rely on the blind and unconditional American help alone. Thus, the fixed seek for new allies started.
For the primary time in a long time, Israel started confronting its extended isolation on the UNGA. America’s vetoes on the UN Safety Council might have shielded Israel from accountability to its navy occupation and warfare crimes; however US vetoes had been hardly sufficient to present Israel the legitimacy that it has lengthy coveted. In a current dialog with former UN human rights envoy, Richard Falk, the Princeton Professor Emeritus defined to me that, regardless of Israel’s potential to flee punishment, it’s quickly dropping what he refers to because the ‘legitimacy warfare’.
Palestine, based on Falk, continues to win that warfare, one that may solely be achieved via actual, grassroots international solidarity. It’s exactly this issue that explains Israel’s eager curiosity in transferring the battlefield to Africa and different elements of the World South.
On July 5, 2016, then Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, kick-started Israel’s personal ‘scramble for Africa’ with a go to to Kenya, which was described as historic by the Israeli media. Certainly, it was the primary go to by an Israeli prime minister within the final 50 years. After spending a while in Nairobi, the place he attended the Israel-Kenya Financial Discussion board alongside tons of of Israeli and Kenyan enterprise leaders, he moved on to Uganda, the place he met leaders from different African nations together with South Sudan, Rwanda, Ethiopia and Tanzania. Throughout the similar month, Israel introduced the renewal of diplomatic ties between Israel and Guinea.
The brand new Israeli technique flowed from there. Extra high-level visits to Africa and triumphant bulletins about new joint financial ventures and investments adopted. In June 2017, Netanyahu took half within the Financial Neighborhood of West African States (ECOWAS), held within the Liberian capital, Monrovia. There, he went so far as rewriting historical past.
“Africa and Israel share a pure affinity,” Netanyahu claimed in his speech. “We now have, in some ways, related histories. Your nations toiled beneath overseas rule. You skilled horrific wars and slaughters. That is very a lot our historical past.” With these phrases, Netanyahu tried, not solely to cover Israel’s colonial intentions, but in addition rob Palestinians of their very own historical past.
Furthermore, the Israeli chief had hoped to crown his political and financial achievements with the Israel-Africa Summit, an occasion that was meant to formally welcome Israel, to not a selected African regional alliance, however to the entire of Africa. Nevertheless, in September 2017, the organizers of the occasion determined to indefinitely postpone it, after it was confirmed to be going down in Lome, capital of Togo, on October 23-27 of that very same 12 months. What was seen by Israeli leaders as a short lived setback was the results of intense, behind-the-scenes lobbying of a number of African and Arab nations, together with South Africa and Algeria.
Untimely ‘Victory’
Finally, it was a mere short-term setback. The admission of Israel into the 55-member African bloc in July is taken into account by Israeli officers and media pundits as a serious political victory, particularly as Tel Aviv has been laboring to attain this standing since 2002. On the time, many obstacles stood in the best way, just like the robust objection raised by Libya beneath the management of Muammar Ghaddafi and the insistence of Algeria that Africa should stay dedicated to its anti-Zionist beliefs, and so forth. Nevertheless, one after the opposite, these obstacles had been eliminated or marginalized.
In a current assertion, Israel’s new Overseas Minister, Yair Lapid, celebrated Israel’s Africa membership as an “vital a part of strengthening the material of Israel’s overseas relations”. In keeping with Lapid, the exclusion of Israel from the AU was an “anomaly that existed for nearly twenty years”. In fact, not all African nations agree with Lapid’s handy logic.
In keeping with TRT information, citing Algerian media, 17 African nations, together with Zimbabwe, Algeria and Liberia, have objected to Israel’s admission to the Union. In a separate assertion, South Africa expressed outrage on the resolution, describing the “unjust and unwarranted resolution of the AU Fee to grant Israel observer standing within the African Union” as “appalling”. For his half, Algerian Overseas Minister, Ramtane Lamamra, stated that his nation will “not stand idly by in entrance of this step taken by Israel and the African Union with out consulting the member states.”
Regardless of Israel’s sense of triumphalism, it appears that evidently the battle for Africa continues to be raging, a battle of politics, ideology and financial pursuits that’s more likely to proceed unabated for years to return. Nevertheless, for Palestinians and their supporters to have an opportunity at profitable this battle, they need to perceive the character of the Israeli technique via which Israel depicts itself to numerous African nations because the savior, bestowing favors and introducing new applied sciences to fight actual, tangible issues. Being extra technologically superior as in comparison with many African nations, Israel is ready to supply its superior ‘safety’, IT and irrigation applied sciences to African states in change for diplomatic ties, help on the UNGA and profitable investments.
Consequently, Palestine’s Africa dichotomy rests partly on the truth that African solidarity with Palestine has traditionally been positioned throughout the bigger political framework of mutual African-Arab solidarity. But, with official Arab solidarity with Palestine now weakening, Palestinians are pressured to assume outdoors this conventional field, in order that they could construct direct solidarity with African nations as Palestinians, with out essentially merging their nationwide aspirations with the bigger, now fragmented, Arab physique politic.
Whereas such a job is daunting, it’s also promising, as Palestinians now have the chance to construct bridges of help and mutual solidarity in Africa via direct contacts, the place they function their very own ambassadors. Clearly, Palestine has a lot to achieve, but in addition a lot to supply Africa. Palestinian docs, engineers, civil protection and frontline staff, educationists, intellectuals and artists are among the most extremely certified and completed within the Center East. True, they’ve a lot to study from their African friends, but in addition have a lot to present.
In contrast to persisting stereotypes, many African universities, organizations and cultural facilities function vibrant mental hubs. African thinkers, philosophers, writers, journalists, artists and athletes are among the most articulate, empowered and completed on this planet. Any pro-Palestine technique in Africa ought to maintain these African treasures in thoughts as a method of participating, not solely with people however with entire societies.
Israeli media reported extensively and proudly about Israel’s admission to the AU. The celebrations, nonetheless, may also be untimely, for Africa will not be a bunch of self-seeking leaders bestowing political favors in change for meager returns. Africa can be the guts of probably the most highly effective anti-colonial developments the world has ever identified. A continent of this dimension, complexity, and proud historical past can’t be written off as if a mere ‘prize’ to be received or misplaced by Israel and its neocolonial associates.
– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He’s the writer of 5 books. His newest is “These Chains Will Be Damaged: Palestinian Tales of Wrestle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons” (Readability Press). Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Analysis Fellow on the Middle for Islam and World Affairs (CIGA) and likewise on the Afro-Center East Middle (AMEC). His web site is www.ramzybaroud.internet
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