The story is almost too familiar and dramatic to bear repeating: Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack against Israel on Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) – the most sacred day in the Jewish calendar. Israel was caught unprepared. As the Egyptian military confidently crossed the Suez Canal and Syrian forces entered the Golan Heights, confused Israeli soldiers hurried to the fronts from their homes. The US was initially reluctant to send Israel military aid but was ultimately convinced. With its support Israel managed not only to recover but to take the offensive. By the time the war ended, Israeli forces crossed to the west bank of the Suez Canal and were threatening to continue to Cairo.
The war was the final straw in the deterioration of Israel’s diplomatic status in Africa. Dahomey (from 1975, Benin) severed ties on 6 October, the day the war began, followed by Rwanda three days later. The following week, Israeli forces crossed the Suez Canal from the Sinai Peninsula into what is unequivocally African soil and the Arab members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) decided to raise the prices of oil and place an oil embargo on states supportive of Israel.26 Both events only increased the pressure on African states to distance themselves from Israel, if not out of solidarity with Egypt then out of fear for their own economies. Within a month, another 18 African states severed relations with Israel. The only African countries that did not were Lesotho, Swaziland, Malawi and Mauritius. The reward from the Arab world came in the form of various commitments for financial aid and the establishment of the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa (BADEA), headquartered in Khartoum.27
As Israeli bureaucrats were exchanging accusations about who was to blame for Israel’s diplomatic downfall in Africa,28 a number of African leaders approached Israeli representations with conciliatory messages that indicated that in fact they did not perceive the break of diplomatic ties with the same gravity the Israelis did. Some even expressed their hope that Israel would continue supporting them with its technical cooperation programmes despite the lack of formal ties. The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs found this inappropriate, if not offensive. Providing aid to countries that clearly and openly rejected Israel seemed untenable. Not all Israeli assistance programmes were immediately terminated, but in the following years the number of Israeli experts in Africa and African students in Israel dropped.29
Nonetheless, after overcoming the initial shock of the diplomatic crisis, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did instruct its representatives in the US and Europe that if African states approached them and expressed interest ‘in creating or solidifying a semi-official Israeli presence, we are open to discussion of the matter’.30 Thus, while the active diplomatic network the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had established in Africa essentially vanished, Israeli–African security, intelligence and commercial networks did not. Embassies were shut down, but Israeli interest offices were maintained in Kenya, Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. The Israeli national airline, EL-AL, continued to fly to Nairobi regularly, and trade between Israel and Africa not only continued but grew.31 Israeli companies that began operating in the continent during the 1960s stayed when the diplomats left, and even expanded their operations.
In the following years, African votes at the UN clearly shifted towards the Arab position on issues concerning Israel and they overwhelmingly supported resolutions that reaffirmed the rights of the Palestinian people.32 The only exceptions were those states that did not sever ties with Israel, which still occasionally abstained. When the UN General Assembly voted in 1975 on a controversial resolution that defined Zionism as ‘a form of racism and racial discrimination’, only 5 African countries opposed it and 11 abstained, while the rest supported it.33 Meanwhile, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), benefiting from the new momentum of Afro-Arab solidarity, slowly began to broaden its diplomatic efforts in Africa, opening missions in countries that severed ties with Israel and mobilising African support for its cause.34
The rise of covert military diplomacy
In Israel, turbulent days followed the 1973 war. A national commission of inquiry cleared Golda Meir and her Defence Minister Moshe Dayan of responsibility for the failure to predict and prepare for the Arab attack. The public was enraged. On 10 April 1974, amidst mass demonstrations, Golda Meir resigned. Yitzhak Rabin, who was chief of staff during the Six Day War and later Israel’s ambassador to the US, replaced her. For the first time, Israel had a former chief of staff as its prime minister. Shimon Peres, by then with almost two decades of experience in Israel’s defence establishment, lost the battle for the prime minister’s position to Rabin and became minister of defence. Yigal Allon, who served as an IDF general during the 1948 war and was Rabin’s commander in pre-state Palmach militia, was Israel’s new foreign minister.35
If military figures dominated Israel’s government, the military industries began to dominate its international strategy and economy. After the 1973 war, Israel’s deterrence had to be restored. This meant rebuilding its army and, equally important, ensuring that it was as self-sufficient as possible.36 As the Israeli defence industry massively expanded in the following years, experimenting with new and increasingly sophisticated technologies, the scale of Israeli arms exports soared. In 1967 Israel’s total arms exports were estimated at around $30 million, most of which was ammunition. By 1973, this number had more or less doubled. By the early 1980s, the figure was above $1 billion annually.37 To guarantee that the expansion of the defence establishment remained viable, Israeli leaders were soon ready to sell arms to whomever agreed to buy them. And their customers were exactly those states ready to buy arms from anyone who agreed to sell them.
The most significant ramification of these processes – politically and economically – was the emergence of an alliance between Israel and the one African state it had previously tried to publicly avoid. Until the early 1970s, Jerusalem had an ambivalent relationship with South Africa. The South African Jewish community was one of the most important financial donors to Israel, and since the war of 1948, young Jewish South Africans regularly travelled to Israel to volunteer in its military – a ‘tradition of military pilgrimage’ that has continued until today.38 But Israel’s opposition to apartheid kept the two states apart. Not only did Israel regularly vote against South Africa in the UN, but some of the most vocal anti-apartheid activists in South Africa were Jewish. As Israel was losing ground in Africa, however, the similarities between the Jewish state and apartheid South Africa – two besieged, exclusive communities that viewed themselves as outposts of the West in a hostile, Soviet-dominated environment – became increasingly apparent, the identification between their leaders and publics grew, and their interests began to converge.
After the events of October 1973 and under the leadership of Shimon Peres on the Israeli side and Defence Minister P. W. Botha on the South African side, negotiations began on a comprehensive and far-reaching defence cooperation.39 In 1976, South African Prime Minister John Vorster travelled to Israel on an official visit, giving the emerging relationship a public facet. But, as Sasha Polakow-Suransky shows in his detailed study of this alliance, its true nature and scope remained confidential. Away from the public’s eyes, the defence elites of both countries developed remarkably close ties as they were regularly shuttling between Tel Aviv and Johannesburg, sharing intelligence and experiences in counterinsurgency warfare and developing new military technologies. Covert arms trade and military cooperation flourished and continued well after the UN Security Council in November 1977 passed a mandatory arms embargo against Pretoria. By 1979, some 35% of Israeli military exports were heading to South Africa – Israel’s largest arms client.40 The cooperation probably reached its most extreme level of secrecy with the collaboration in the development of nuclear bombs and delivery systems. The two countries exchanged not only knowledge in this field but also nuclear materials and are widely believed to have conducted a nuclear test together in the South Atlantic Ocean in September 1979.41
Another country that maintained a similarly discreet and highly influential relationship with Israel after 1973 was Ethiopia. In 1974, a revolution led to the overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie and the emergence of the socialist Derg regime, led by Mengistu Haile Mariam. So deep was Israeli
