The relations between Israel and Africa apply since the Yom Kippur war in 1973 as difficult. Now Jerusalem is looking for the shoulder-to-shoulder with Muslim African countries such as Chad, Mali or Niger.
George Weah, President of Liberia, arrived on Monday (25.02.2019) in Israel. During the state visit, he is scheduled to meet with President Reuven Rivlin and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In Liberia, has abandoned its diplomatic relations with Israel, never, is rather the exception. In 1947, the West voted African country for the UN partition plan for Palestine, which is a prerequisite for the establishment of the state of Israel. Many other African countries, severed after the Israeli-Arab Wars at the beginning of the 1970s, the contact-to-Israel – for example, the Chad in 1972.
The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in January to a Meeting with the Chadian President Idriss Déby in N’djamena, traveled, took many observers as a Surprise. In addition, the Premier should have spoken at a conference of the “potential diplomatic relations” to Mali and Niger, reported the Times of Israel. All three countries are majority Muslim. Officially, the statement of the Prime Minister, has not been confirmed. Nevertheless, the question of whether Israel adjusted its relations with Africa.
The process of rapprochement
The political analyst Michel Hervé Mbia Yebega from the Institute’s “Afrique Monde” in Abidjan, Côte d’ivoire, sees the approach as a “result of a process” that had already begun in the early 1980s – with the conclusion of peace between Israel and Egypt. In addition, the interruption of diplomatic relations in 1972/73, had not prevented that in diskreterer Connections had been maintained: “There were various forms of cooperation, in agriculture, in medicine, the economy in General.”
In 2016, visited Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Uganda’s ruler Yoweri Museveni
Matthias Basedau, Director of the GIGA Institute for African studies, adds that “the classically pronounced anti-Semitism or anti-Zionism, in the African-Muslim countries is also not as pronounced as in the Middle East.” Consequently, the governments had no domestic difficulties to explain this approach.
Also, you must not allow the rapprochement between Israel and Saudi Arabia: “There was a relaxation in the relationship between Israel and Sunni Muslim countries.” This should be understood in the context of the competition between Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia. “Because Saudi Arabia is currently hostile to the very strongly with Iran, is the principle: The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
Internal and external political interests
Israel take basically any opportunity to get more recognition in diplomatic terms and also in addition to this, explained Basedau. The country was diplomatically very isolated. The domestic political context, one should not ignore is: In Israel, is on 9. April: “For Netanyahu, the aim is also to score points before the elections and to show that he brings in a diplomatic international relations of his country.”
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Ely Karmon, a political scientist at the International Institute for counter-terrorism in Jerusalem, declared that Israel was following the intensification of the relations to Africa with two objectives: one was political, because in the past, Africa would be Muslim countries vote is often the case with the United Nations, together with Arab countries against Israeli interests. And, in economic terms, Israel is looking at ways to Export.
New Complexity
Also, the African States could benefit from closer cooperation with Israel, says political scientist Yebega, because they were faced with demographic challenges and looking for support for a sustainable development, “which requires technological Knowledge, which you have at the Moment”.
Even if the rapprochement between Israel and Africa was based on a certain continuity, one could speak basically could, that the cards would be reshuffled: “There are not, on the one hand, the countries that support the Palestinians, and on the other hand, the support of Israel,” says Yebega. “The situation has become much more complex, and the African States to promote much more of their own interests.”