an opinion on the matter, the issue was of no interest to them, and they had no tools to express their views or to influence policy makers. In an audience of this size one can deal with ‘personal hasbara’.54
It is therefore not surprising that in every country assistance was channelled through key individuals who were supposed to be convinced to support the Israeli position on the Israeli–Arab conflict. More than an official or stated policy, this was a natural reaction to the conditions on the ground and to the fact that Israel had limited resources and very specific political objectives. Having witnessed several African coups, by the second half of the 1960s Israeli officials also came to understand the vulnerability of diplomacy that is based on personal deals with leaders and realised that they needed to identify and befriend high-profile military officers as well, as they might end up in power at some point.55
Over time, however, Israel could not sustain its investments in aid and publicity in the race for influence in Africa. Like all foreign aid in the postcolonial period, Israeli support was easily used by African leaders to advance their local objectives. Youth training programmes suffered from local attempts to ‘transform them into personal political and patronage machines’, for example, while African students sent for training were often chosen based on their personal connections rather than merit.56 More problematic for Israel was the fact that the Israeli–Arab rivalry for African support gave African leaders great leverage vis-à-vis both sides, as they were always able to increase the price of their friendship by threatening, more or less explicitly, to strengthen their cooperation with the other side. Since technical cooperation and development aid emerged primarily as a tool for increasing Israeli political and ideological influence, it was often promised out of the Israeli urge to gain a foothold anywhere that would otherwise be occupied by the Egyptians or the Soviets.
Israeli attempts to convince Western countries, and primarily the US, to fund its aid operations in Africa were largely unsuccessful, and its economic problems at home made it increasingly difficult for it to expand or even maintain its operations in Africa.57 Meanwhile, the expectations Israel raised, the promises it made and the requests it received exceeded its capacity. By the mid-1960s it became clear that Israeli developmental models were not going to magically transform Africa any time soon, and the volume of Israel’s technical assistance began to decline. Many programmes had to be frozen, and Israel had to be more selective with its assistance and avoid expensive and wasteful initiatives such as the establishment of paramilitary youth organisations.58
The battle for diplomatic support
The challenges Israel faced in outmanoeuvring its Arab adversaries in the fields of propaganda and development aid were ultimately reflected in the Israeli struggle to secure African diplomatic support in multilateral fora. While the 1960s are often portrayed and remembered as a period of flourishing Israeli–African relations, Israel’s ability to leverage its warm relationship with individual African states into political support was limited. That new African states consistently recognised Israel and established relations with it was important in and of itself. But Israel also needed the public backing of these new countries in international fora to protect its interests at home, and this support was much more difficult to gain than it initially seemed.
Since Egypt, under the leadership of Gamal Abdel Nasser, turned to Africa at the time as well and sought to curb Israeli influence,59 the Middle Eastern rivalry featured in all the pan-Africanist conferences leading up to the formation of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU). The First Conference of Independent African States, which was held in Accra in April 1958, adopted a rather 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
