Israel largely lost this battle during the 1973 Israeli–Arab war, when most African countries severed diplomatic relations with it. After Israel and Egypt signed a peace agreement in 1979, the urgency of guaranteeing African support declined, and the Israeli–Egyptian rivalry in Africa was slowly replaced with the much less militarised Israeli–Palestinian one. After Israel began to negotiate with the Palestinians, and following the Israeli–Jordanian peace agreement in the 1990s, Africa lost much of its strategic importance from the Israeli perspective. However, following the collapse of the Israeli–Palestinian peace process in the early 2000s and as Israel’s international isolation grew again, it slowly began to ‘return’ to the continent, once again seeking alliances that would weaken its rivals in the Middle East. If previous rounds of Israeli–Arab/Palestinian competition in Africa were intertwined in global Cold War dynamics, today the battle takes place within the context of the ‘war on terror’, the growing popularity of born-again Christian and reformist Islamic movements, and the renewed geostrategic interest of both Gulf and Asian powers in Africa.
Securitised international objectives also influenced the evolution and workings of Israeli state institutions. Since Israel’s international strategy was always considered and presented as a matter of state or regime survival, the security sector came to dominate it and civilian institutions or bureaucracies, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, were regularly bypassed or obstructed. The military was always the most influential and respected institution in the Israeli polity, and Israeli society was always obsessed with security and defence. As the country grew older, however, and particularly since the wars of 1967 and 1973, the distinction between its military elite and civilian leadership became increasingly blurred, as former security personnel and generals began to occupy a growing number of senior positions in the government, state institutions, parastatals, the arms industry and, more recently, the closely linked high-tech industry. Ultimately, they formed what Sheffer and Barak called a ‘security network’ – a powerful group of like-minded security-oriented people that transcends formal institutions and shapes Israel’s international strategy and national priorities.13
From an early stage, the security sector was deeply involved in Israel’s Africa diplomacy, often dealing with issues that are not directly related to defence, such as propaganda or migration management. This matters not only because it indicates what Israel’s priorities in Africa are and the extent to which its foreign strategy is shaped by its defence interests, but also because it determines which Israeli institutions interact with African states and peoples and how they operate. As opposed to civilian institutions, security agencies not only tend to seek military solutions to political problems but have great freedom to act in secrecy, based on the discretion of their members, and at the margins of the law or entirely outside of its realms. While civilian bureaucracies take pride in their rule-bound nature and emphasise consistency, security and intelligence agencies glorify the creative circumvention of rules and rely on opaqueness, informality and unpredictability. As the following chapters demonstrate, the resort to ‘clandestine diplomacies’, covert action and special ‘operations’ has been a salient feature of Israel’s interaction with African states.14
Equally important, and closely linked to the securitisation and informalisation of Israel’s presence in Africa and the opaqueness surrounding it, is its privatised nature. In the early 1960s, Israel’s engagement with African countries was both state-led and underpinned by a distinctly ‘statist’ vision of modernisation and state-building. But in the following decades, private actors became increasingly dominant players. Some of Israel’s largest security firms are technically private enterprises, though they are led and staffed by former members of Israel’s security apparatuses and work closely with Israeli armed forces and intelligence agencies. Some of the most dominant Israeli civilian firms in Africa (operating in the construction and extractives industries) maintain close ties with Israeli officials to advance the business, defence and political interests of elites in both Israel and Africa. Politicians and private actors often work hand in hand in the process of profit-making. The distinction between national interests and private ones can be unclear.
Over the years, some Israeli civil servants, diplomats and politicians protested against these processes of securitisation and privatisation and the lack of transparency surrounding Israel’s operations in Africa, claiming that they undermine Israel’s political objectives, the integrity of its state institutions and its human rights obligations. Israeli Africanist, human rights activist and former member of Knesset (Israel’s parliament) Naomi Chazan wrote in 2006 that behind Israel’s Africa strategy was always ‘an overt struggle between the diplomats and African aficionados on the one hand and the defense establishment and private interests on the other’, which ultimately ‘has been won by the latter’.15 The rise and current operations of Israeli private actors and security firms in Africa is further explored in the following chapters. But while these actors certainly gained the upper hand, it is also important to acknowledge that their domination has not been uncontested. Beneath the surface of Israel’s engagement with Africa always lay an internal Israeli debate about the Israeli state, its institutions and its priorities.
However, it was not only Israeli interests and initiatives that drove Israeli–African engagements or determined their trajectory. Students of Africa’s international relations will be familiar with debates around the agency and leverage of African actors within the international system and vis-à-vis Western or BRICS countries, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. They will also be familiar with the argument – put forward by Christopher Clapham in the 1990s – that despite their economic and military marginality in the international sphere, African states are not passive victims of the whims of much richer external actors.16 Rather, they are often able to take advantage of the geostrategic needs of more powerful states, offering them assets such as political loyalty or military access to strategically important territories in return for resources and support which can subsequently be used to advance local African agendas.
This book naturally focuses on Israel more than it does on any specific African state. However, the following chapters also aim to show that just as much as the history of Israel in Africa is a story about Israeli leaders seeking influence in the continent in order to curb their regional adversaries, it is also a story about African leaders utilising the rivalries of the Middle East and North Africa in order to draw Israeli material and political support for their own local ends. As we shall see, what Israel and Israelis did in Africa was determined by the changing economic and political circumstances in specific African states just as much as it was determined by the conditions in Israel/Palestine. As strategies of governance transformed, as flows of resources shifted and as the tools for their accumulation and distribution changed in Africa, so did the ways in which different Israeli actors were seeking to establish their influence on the continent.
Structure, scope and sources
The first two chapters of the book deal with the history of Israel’s engagement with Africa. The evolution of bilateral relations in the longue durée is crucial for understanding their current trajectory and dynamics. Political narratives, like institutional knowledge and capacities (or lack thereof), do not emerge out of nowhere. It is impossible to understand Israel’s contemporary strategic interest and the rhetoric Israelis deploy on the continent without considering Israel’s relationships with African countries in the early post-independence period, from the late 1950s and until the mid-1960s. Israeli foreign minister at the time, Golda Meir, referred to this period as Israel’s ‘African adventure’.17 It was characterised by extensive Israeli civilian and military assistance to African countries as part of a geopolitical competition between Israel and the Arab world, underlined by Israel’s attempt to establish itself as a legitimate member of the international community in general and the postcolonial ‘Third World’ in particular. This period is the focus of the first chapter.
The second chapter explores the transformation of Israel’s engagement with African countries from the 1967 war, during which Israel occupied territories in Egypt, Jordan and Syria, through the Israeli–Arab war of 1973, during
