Africa, Headlines, Human Rights, Middle East & North Africa

MIDEAST: Israel Turns Dubiously to Africa

Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler

JERUSALEM, Aug 19 2009 (IPS) - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been busy pursuing one aspect of the Obama Administration’s agenda – carrying to Africa the U.S. message of accountability. With a rather different agenda, Israel’s foreign minister Avigdor Liberman also has Africa in his sights.

Whereas the U.S. is pressing a moral message hard – more democracy and less corruption, the Israeli approach is entirely pragmatic.

It’s not the first time Israel has been heavily involved in Africa.

Tanzanian freshmen at the University of Dar es Salaam will be excused for being unaware of the fact that their campus strikingly resembles facilities in Tel Aviv and Beersheba, two of Israel’s leading universities. That’s because the UDSM campus was designed by Israeli architects.

Nearly half a century ago, there was unexpected interaction between sub- Saharan Africa, just emerging from the dark years of colonial rule, and Israel – which had come into existence a decade-and-a-half earlier after ridding itself of a British presence – busily engaged in reaching out to other emerging nations.

Ever since, it’s been a relationship of ups and downs.

The aid to development programmes of Israeli experts, especially in the fields of irrigation, agriculture, communal rural development and medical training, won Israel considerable sympathy, and friends, in many of the newly- independent states. Hundreds of African students and experts underwent specialised training, tailor-made for their societies, in Israel.

But, as was the case in the Cold War era, the Israeli development projects were not entirely altruistic.

There was also the political motive of trying to break the ostracism in which Arab states and their allies in the Third World were encasing the fledgling new Middle Eastern state. This became especially acute following the 1955 conference of the non-aligned world in Bandung in Indonesia, where non- co-operation with Israel was adopted as policy.

There was a strategic dimension too. Israel’s legendary first prime minister David Ben-Gurion and his foreign minister Golda Meir foresaw a policy of encircling the circle of Israel’s regional isolation through alliances with non- Arab states on the periphery of the region – Turkey and Iran and, critically, Ethiopia in the Horn of Africa.

Just back from an extensive tour of South America, Liberman is soon to set out on a five-nation African tour. The Israeli foreign ministry calls it “an out- of-the-ordinary visit”, the most extensive ever by Israel’s top diplomat to the continent. He will criss-cross Africa to take in Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Angola and Nigeria.

“Avigdor Liberman would perhaps not be happy to hear that he is following in Golda Meir’s (Socialist) footsteps,” says strategic affairs commentator Yossi Melman. “But the fact is that, like Israel’s foreign minister from the 1950s and ’60s, the current foreign minister is very interested in Africa and in restoring Israel’s status there.”

Liberman told the Haaretz daily: “To my regret, Israel has for many years been absent from two continents – South America and Africa – and does not have a sufficient presence there.”

The Israeli foreign minister has a personal strategic purpose, though. He is under threat of indictment for corruption and money laundering, and is under constant international scrutiny for his Yisrael Beitenu party’s racist ideology and his own past offensive comments about Arab-Israelis and about Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak. He is desperate to find ways to break out of his political isolation.

Unlike Clinton who has just preceded Liberman to several of the same African states, one country not on his itinerary is South Africa. There are still bitter memories about the strong ties Israel maintained with apartheid South Africa, including its reported involvement in helping it develop nuclear capability, subsequently shelved.

Liberman says his visit will provide a diplomatic boost to states with economic and security ties with Israel. “I want to tell them that Africa is important to Israel,” he said in his interview. “We must not neglect them, especially in view of the efforts by countries like Iran to influence them and establish themselves there.”

Security sources point out that Israel has an additional immediate security interest – keeping tabs on the spread of Al-Qaeda linked groups in various parts of Africa.

Officials in the Israeli foreign ministry’s Mashav Department of International Cooperation have long advocated the need to build on “Israel’s African Golden Age” (when expertise and civilian know-how were the tools of its diplomatic trade). But, quietly, they voice regret that, however welcome their minister’s initiative, it has a less savoury dimension.

As former Israeli ambassador to Angola Tamar Golan, who heads the Africa Project at Ben-Gurion University notes, “the sad truth is that with the exception of a few civilian enterprises, all Israel’s activity in Africa is related to diamonds and weapons.”

Says Melman: “The ‘Ugly Israeli’ in the guise of the arms dealer (mostly former intelligence and military officials) who promotes weapons sales on behalf of Israeli military industries, with the backing of the defence establishment, has given Israel a bad name on the continent. Israelis have reportedly been involved in civil wars (in Angola, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Cote d’Ivoire) and in aiding dictatorial regimes such as in Equatorial Guinea and the two Congo republics.”

The ministry confirms that Liberman will be accompanied by a large retinue of businessmen, many of them arms dealers, as well as security advisers and representatives of state-backed military industries.

Even during the Africa-Israel romance of the ’60s, behind the scenes Israel was known to have sold arms and to have sent military experts to many countries and also to have been involved in military training programmes (the most notorious ‘beneficiary’ having been the Uganda tyrant, Idi Amin). According to various publications, Israelis were involved in coup d’etats in Uganda and Zanzibar in the sixties, or at least had prior knowledge of them.

“Regrettably,” says Golan, “Israel’s current mercantile presence, often through shadowy mediators rather than official channels, has little prospect of being altered by Liberman.” She adds, “His real test is whether he is genuinely intent on Israel again making some kind of positive mark in Africa. That will mean him taking the advice of his ministry experts and allow room for Israel to undertake aid to development projects that have suitable financial backing.”