West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, rather than to Egypt. For them, these events marked ‘the catastrophe’, or in Arabic, al-Nakba. Israelis, however, remember 1948 as their ‘War of Independence’, as it marked the establishment of the Jewish state. For them, the return of Palestinian refugees was, and remains to this day, unacceptable. When the war ended, there were some 156,000 Arabs and 716,000 Jews in Israel.3 Allowing 700,000 Palestinian refugees to return to their homes would have threatened the Jewish demographic majority. A moment of liberation for the Jewish people and a disaster for the Palestinians, the violence of 1948 resulted in one of the world’s greatest and most protracted refugee crises and led to one of its most persistent and politicised conflicts – both of which are yet to be resolved. It established a set of facts that continue to shape Israel’s domestic and international politics today and have been a defining factor in the history of its engagement with Africa as well.
It did not take long for the impact of Israel’s independence and the 1948 war to be felt in Africa beyond Egypt. The Arab League – comprising at the time Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Syria – refused to recognise the new Jewish state and boycotted it. Egypt argued that it had the right to ban Sudan, then under a joint Anglo-Egyptian government, from trading with Israel as well. Israel, however, saw in trade with colonial Sudan an opportunity to undermine the Arab boycott. Some Israeli officials even entertained the idea of seeking ties with the country, but this was never seriously pursued.4 With its independence in January 1956, Sudan joined the Arab League. Over the next two years Israel tried to appeal to Washington and Paris to extend their political and financial support to Khartoum in order to keep it out of Egypt’s sphere of influence, but its efforts did not bear fruit.5 To find allies in Africa, Israel had to look further afield.
Israel turns to Africa
Histories of Israel’s engagement with Africa most commonly begin a few years after 1948, with the resounding diplomatic shock of the Bandung Conference. In 1955 Israel was excluded from the first Asian–African Conference, which was held in Bandung, Indonesia, and brought together 29 young nations to discuss issues of mutual concern and political and cultural cooperation. From the African continent, Libya, Egypt, Ethiopia, Liberia, Gold Coast (now Ghana) and Sudan all participated. Israel was not only left out of this forum, but the participants formally expressed their support ‘of the rights of the Arab people of Palestine and called for the implementation of the United Nations Resolutions on Palestine and the achievement of the peaceful settlement of the Palestine question’.6 Similarly excluded from the conference was white-ruled South Africa – hardly a country Israel wanted to be associated with at the time.
A united Afro-Asian ‘Third World’ appeared to be emerging as a promising new force in the international sphere, and Israel was being branded as its enemy. The country’s foreign policy strategy, it became clear in Jerusalem, had to be reconsidered. Since independence in 1948, Israel primarily focused on strengthening its relationships with Western countries, with the view that strong ties with North America, Europe and the Soviet Union would guarantee its existence and support its economy.7 Otherwise, Israel’s diplomatic efforts in Asia in the early 1950s were limited, and largely unsuccessful. Israel had a friendly relationship with Burma, one of the organisers of the conference in Bandung, but failed to establish close ties with any of the region’s key powers, which all sided with the Palestinians. By the second half of the 1950s covert ties were also established with Turkey and Iran, the most significant aspect of which was a trilateral mechanism for intelligence sharing.8
‘I used to look around me at the United Nations in 1957 and 1958 and think to myself: “We have no family here”’, Golda Meir, Israel’s foreign minister at the time, recalled.9 Born in Russia in 1898 and educated in the US, in 1921 Meir migrated to British Mandate Palestine, where she joined the Histadrut, the Jewish General Federation of Labour in Palestine, and later Mapai, the Israeli Labour Party, which dominated the Israeli political landscape in the country’s first decades of independence. In 1956, Ben-Gurion appointed her as foreign minister, a position she would hold for almost a decade. She had never visited Africa before and her knowledge of the continent was basic at best when she first stepped into her new office in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in June 1956.10 Little did she know that by the time she left the ministry, she would have become the politician most strongly associated with Africa in Israel’s history.
Besides exclusion from the rising club of young postcolonial non-aligned states, another reason that Israeli attention turned to Africa in the late 1950s was the opening of the Red Sea for Israeli shipping. The right of Israeli ships to travel freely to and from Eilat, Israel’s sole port on the Red Sea, through the Gulf of Aqaba and the Straits of Tiran, has been a matter of dispute between Israel and Egypt. In late October 1956, Israel invaded Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, supported by Britain and France. This quickly led to a political crisis, and both the US and the Soviets demanded that Israel withdraw from the Egyptian territories. The Soviets threatened Israel with a military intervention, and the US with cutting aid. Israel withdrew, but was able to pressure Egypt to open the Straits of Tiran for Israeli shipping in return.11 A military invasion into a neighbouring Arab country in cooperation with two colonial powers certainly did not help Israel’s reputation among young Afro-Asian states, but it did guarantee its access to the Red Sea and therefore to Ethiopia (then united with today’s Eritrea), the East African Coast and southern Africa.
Formally, Israel had low-key diplomatic ties with both Liberia and Ethiopia by the mid-1950s,12 but it was its relationship with Ghana that marked the beginning of its extensive diplomatic efforts in Africa. A consulate in Accra was established in 1956, prior to Ghana’s independence, and was upgraded to an embassy upon independence in 1957. Ehud Avriel, Israel’s first ambassador to Ghana, recounted that at independence Kwame Nkrumah presented the Israeli delegation with ‘the same list of urgent requirements he expected from other older states’, and within a year ‘every single requirement on Nkrumah’s list had become a subject for intensive cooperation between Ghana and Israel’.13 As Levey writes, ‘Avriel’s objective was to turn Ghana into a showcase of Israel’s aid in Africa’s development’. He had three key aims:
First, the ambassador worked to gain both Prime Minister Nkrumah’s confidence and influence over him. Second, he broadened the scope of Israel’s economic ties with Ghana. Third, he initiated a defense connection with Ghana that created a precedent for Israel’s military ties with other African states.14
A series of bilateral initiatives were soon developed. The Israeli water planning authority (Tahal) assisted with water infrastructure development, the Israeli Histadrut’s construction firm Solel Boneh helped establish the Ghana National Construction Company, and a Ghanaian–Israeli shipping company was established – the Black Star Shipping Line – 60% of which was owned by the government of Ghana and 40% by the Israeli shipping company Zim. Israel sold light arms and provided training to the Ghanaian army, and in 1958 the two countries signed a trade agreement and Israel extended Ghana a $20 million loan.15 Israelis, including military officers, also assisted with the establishment of the Ghanaian Nautical College and the Flying Training School, which trained pilots for the Ghana Air Force and Ghana Airways.16 One Israeli expert even assisted with the establishment of the National Symphony Orchestra.17 Ambassador Avriel became a close confidant of Nkrumah, who was able to facilitate contact with other African leaders.18
Following the experience in Ghana, a decision was taken in Jerusalem to pursue ties with other African nations before they gained independence, in order to curb Arab influence as early as possible.19 Israel began sending envoys to African countries to court those local leaders who were expected to lead their nations after independence, promising technical assistance and military training. These initiatives had to be negotiated with Paris and London but were not always pursued with their approval. Both France and Britain were often concerned that allowing the establishment of official Israeli representations would lead to similar Arab demands. For this reason, for example, France opposed the opening
