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Chapter 2

A SECURITY EMPIRE

Among the many African leaders who heard about Israel’s technical and military assistance in the early 1960s and sought to benefit from it was a group of exiled southern Sudanese politicians. Their plan was to fight for the independence of southern Sudan: to liberate it from the Arab government in Khartoum. Their main problem was that they had few resources at their disposal: meagre funds, even less political backing and hardly any weapons. As early as 1961, southern leaders began appealing for Israeli assistance, writing letters to Jerusalem and knocking on the doors of Israeli embassies across Africa.¹ Israeli officials, however, were reluctant to support them. They understood that the war in Sudan represented a golden opportunity for fuelling the tensions between Africans and Arabs, something that could only strengthen Israel in the international sphere. But the southern secessionist agenda was unpopular among African leaders, and Israel did not want to damage its diplomatic efforts on the continent by supporting the controversial cause of a non-state armed group.

It was Israel’s expansion during the war of 1967 that eventually led its leaders to change their minds. Throughout the mid-1960s, tensions between Israel and Syria escalated, prompting mutual exchanges of threats between Israel and its neighbours that resulted in the situation in the entire region spiralling out of control. On 15 May 1967 Egyptian troops entered the Sinai Peninsula and Egypt expelled the UN forces that had been based there since the 1956 Suez campaign. On 22 May Nasser announced the closure of the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping. Not before securing American approval, on 5 June Israel launched a surprise attack, starting a war that ended on 10 June in a major Israeli victory. Within these six days Israel occupied the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip, the Jordanian West Bank and the Syrian Golan Heights.²

Israel’s new occupation of Arab territories complicated its diplomatic position in Africa and altered its security concerns, which now focused on preserving its grip over territories and populations far beyond its original boundaries.³ These developments unavoidably also drew Sudan and the Horn of Africa more clearly into the Middle Eastern conflict. In the following years, a war of attrition unfolded between Israel and Egypt, whose troops were stationed on the eastern and western banks of the Suez Canal. Egypt received most of its military support from the Soviets, but Sudan also lent a hand. The Mossad calculated that increasing the capacity of the rebels in southern Sudan would keep the Sudanese military busy at home, and suggested Israel should act. Golda Meir, who became Israel’s prime minister in March 1969, approved the initiative. During the following two years, the Mossad led a covert operation that involved airdropping arms and humanitarian aid inside the headquarters of the southern Sudanese rebel group Anya-Nya and training its members in guerrilla warfare.

All Israeli assistance was provided via one southern rebel officer, Joseph Lagu. Thanks to Israel’s support, Lagu was able to consolidate his position as the leader of the southern struggle, much to the dismay of other politicians who saw themselves pushed aside. The weapons Israel sent to Sudan were mainly Syrian and Jordanian booty captured during the 1967 conflict: limited in scope and sophistication but nonetheless significant given that the rebels previously had hardly any weapons.⁴ Small delegations of Israeli military advisors, doctors and communication experts travelled through Uganda into Sudan to train the rebels, while additional equipment was transferred through western Ethiopia. The entire operation was carried out with the consent of Ethiopia, Kenya and, above all, Uganda, whose territories Israeli advisors used to sneak into Sudan. To maximise the impact of the operation in the international sphere, the Mossad also embarked on a secret propaganda campaign and disseminated posters and leaflets on behalf of Anya-Nya across the world, publicising the atrocities Khartoum, the Egyptians and the Soviets were committing against Africans.⁵

If the involvement in Sudan was a Mossad-led clandestine operation, after the 1967 war Israeli security agencies were quietly dominating Israel’s presence in neighbouring countries as well. In Ethiopia, Israel began to promote a new secret military alliance (codenamed ‘coffee’) that envisioned the establishment of a joint Israeli–Ethiopian base in Assab, on the Red Sea, though the plan did not materialise.⁶ In Uganda, Israeli military advisors were working in close cooperation with the Ugandan chief of staff, Idi Amin, who also used Israel’s assistance and advice to take power in a military coup in January 1971. In exchange for Israeli support – and, according to some accounts, bribes – Amin advanced Israel’s strategic and economic interests in Uganda, which included free access to southern Sudan.⁷

Israel’s fall from grace in Africa

For Israel, the occupation of Sinai was a strategic asset at home and a diplomatic headache in Africa. On the one hand, Israel occupied Egyptian – therefore African – territory, refused to withdraw from it and soon began establishing military bases and civilian settlements in it. This made it increasingly difficult for Israel to fend off Arab and Soviet allegations that it is a colonial power or for African states to continue to claim that the Israeli–Arab conflict is of no relevance to Africa and should be kept off the OAU’s agenda. On the other hand, with Sinai under control, Israel secured an invaluable buffer zone that protected it from potential Egyptian attacks and regained free access through the Straits of Tiran – advantages it was not willing to give up easily.

In the months following the 1967 war, the future of the occupied territories seemed unclear, and African states remained divided on the matter. The only country to sever ties with Israel following the war was Guinea. When the UN General Assembly in July 1967 voted on two resolutions – one supported by the US and considered more Israel-friendly, and the other supported by the Soviet Union and considered more Arab-friendly – 17 African states that had diplomatic ties with Israel supported the US-backed resolution, and only 9 supported the Soviet-backed one.⁸ At least in this case, Israel’s Africa policy seemed to have paid off, even though neither of the resolutions achieved a sufficient number of votes to be adopted.

It was eventually the UN Security Council that set the tone for the post-1967 negotiations between Israel and its neighbours with Resolution 242, adopted unanimously in November 1967. In essence, the Resolution called for peace in exchange for Israel’s withdrawal from the lands it had occupied during the war. A UN mediator, Dr Gunnar Jarring, was tasked with promoting the implementation of the Resolution, but the negotiations in the following years went nowhere. Israel insisted that it would only withdraw once a peace agreement was achieved following direct negotiations, while Egypt and Jordan insisted that first Israel had to withdraw from their territories.⁹ Meanwhile, Israel consolidated its control over the lands it had occupied during the war. After its remarkable military victory in 1967, its leaders believed that time was on their side.

At the OAU, however, the consensus was gradually shifting against Israel. In September 1967 the OAU issued a somewhat neutral ‘declaration’ expressing its ‘concern’ about the ‘grave situation’ in Egypt.¹⁰ A year later, a resolution was adopted calling for Israel’s withdrawal from ‘all Arab territories occupied’ during the 1967 war, and appealing to ‘all Member States of the OAU to use their influence to ensure a strict implementation of this Resolution’.¹¹ In the following years, the Israeli–Arab conflict featured regularly in OAU meetings, as members reiterated their call for the implementation of Resolution 242.¹² Behind the principled position on the territorial integrity of a fellow African state, there was another material reason for African concern with the issue. Following the 1967 war, the Suez Canal was shut down. For every year that it remained closed, East African nations were losing some $125 million: the prices of their imports increased and the revenues they earned from exports dropped, as ships had to travel all the way around the Cape of Good Hope. South Africa was therefore the one benefiting, and Israel’s refusal to withdraw from Sinai was seen as the main obstacle to solving the matter.¹³

One of the more interesting developments in the African position towards the Middle East at the time was the OAU’s ambitious yet ultimately failed attempt to mediate between Israel and Egypt in order to bring the politically uncomfortable and economically damaging stalemate to an end. In February 1971, in response to a proposal made by Jarring, Egypt agreed to enter peace negotiations with Israel. By then, Golda Meir had become Israel’s prime minister, having replaced Levi Eshkol, who died earlier in 1969. Replying to Jarring’s proposal, however, Meir’s government refused to commit to withdrawing to the pre-war borders, thus undermining his initiative.¹⁴ The OAU adopted a resolution deploring ‘Israel’s defiance to that initiative’, and requesting the OAU chairperson, then Ould Daddah of Mauritania, to ‘consult with the Heads of State and Government so that they use their influence to ensure the full implementation of this resolution’.¹⁵

A committee of ten African heads of state was formed. Its mandate was not clearly defined but it was decided that a group of four of these leaders – led by Léopold Senghor of Senegal – would travel to Israel and Egypt to obtain information and come up with recommendations. Israeli officials initially considered boycotting the initiative altogether, but eventually decided to cooperate, not least because they did not want to damage Israel’s relationship with African states and hoped that this would be an opportunity to prove that the Arab side was to blame for the stalemate in the negotiations.¹⁶ Indeed, Senghor was one of the African leaders most sympathetic to Israel and to Zionism at the time and his conciliatory approach towards Jerusalem drew criticism from Cairo.¹⁷ But by the time the mission ended even Senghor was frustrated with Israel’s intransigence, as Golda Meir still refused to announce that Israel was not interested in annexing any part of Sinai. ‘I must say, quite objectively, that the Egyptians made all the concessions they could’, Senghor said later. ‘Being an African, I understand the Egyptian position. Africa ends at the Sinai Peninsula. Territorial integrity has become a myth in our continent and both we and the Semites live on myths.’¹⁸

The OAU committee’s key recommendation was that Egypt and Israel should resume their negotiations under the auspices of Jarring. But when its proposal was brought before the UN General Assembly in December 1971, most African countries did not support it. The Assembly instead adopted a resolution that politely expressed its ‘appreciation’ of the African initiative, but explicitly called upon Israel to ‘respond favourably’ to Jarring’s proposal from February that year.¹⁹ The OAU summit in Rabat in June 1972 was the final nail in the coffin of the OAU mediation efforts and represented ‘a landmark in the shift of the OAU policy in respect to the Middle East crisis’.²⁰ The OAU deplored Israel’s ‘refusal to respond favorably to the initiative of OAU’, and called on Israel to ‘withdraw immediately from all the occupied Arab territories’.²¹

Meanwhile, Muammar al-Gaddafi, who came to power in 1969, embarked on a calculated diplomatic offensive against Israel’s involvement in Africa. He achieved his first victory when Idi Amin, shortly after coming to power, decided to switch sides and dump Israel in favour of Libyan patronage, which now appeared much more lucrative. Amin began by refusing to allow the Mossad to continue using Uganda as a base for its operations in southern Sudan, and in March 1972 officially severed diplomatic ties with Israel. The embassy was closed, and hundreds of Israelis left the country. Israel initially blamed the decision on Amin’s erratic and unstable personality, highlighting the fact that before breaking off ties, the Ugandan president demanded unrealistic amounts of military support from Israel, which Israel could not and did not want to provide.²² But in November and December 1972, Chad and Congo (Brazzaville) severed ties as well, and were followed by Niger, Mali and Burundi in early 1973.

When OAU members convened again in Addis Ababa in May 1973, they adopted another resolution on the Middle East conflict, this time condemning the ‘negative attitude of Israel, its acts of terrorism and its obstruction of all efforts aimed at a just and equitable solution’ to the conflict with Egypt and calling for its ‘immediate and unconditional withdrawal … from all occupied African and Arab territories’.²³ Hoping that a complete diplomatic collapse could still be averted Israel decided not to disengage from the continent,²⁴ but did not seem to possess a coherent strategy that would allow it to reverse the pro-Arab trend in Africa while also sticking to its position on the occupied Arab territories. In September, the Non-Aligned Conference convened in Algeria, adopting a resolution that equated Zionism with imperialism and called upon all non-aligned countries to support the Palestinians’ ‘struggle against Zionist racist and colonialist settlements for the recovery of their full national rights’ and to ‘boycott Israel diplomatically, economically, militarily and culturally’.²⁵ Togo severed relations with Israel less than two weeks later, followed, in early October, by Zaire.

The Yom Kippur War and its aftermath

On Saturday 6 October 1973, the Israeli calculation that its Arab neighbours would not start a war and that the status quo in the Middle East could be maintained proved wrong. 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 involvement in Ethiopia until 1973 that Israeli Ethiopianist Haggai Erlich has argued that the inability of the imperial establishment to deal with the popular protests it faced in 1974 was partly the result of the expulsion of Israeli military advisors from the country.⁴² Soon after Mengistu took power, he followed in the steps of the emperor he had deposed and turned to Israel, seeking both military support and assistance with convincing Washington to continue its support to Ethiopia despite the brutality of its new Marxist-inspired regime. The Derg saw as its ultimate objective the establishment of a united centralised nation state in Ethiopia and continued to fight secessionists in the northern part of the country. Like Israel, it had an interest in preventing an independent Eritrea.

In return for access to Ethiopian ports in the Red Sea, Israel trained the Ethiopian military and supplied it with ammunition and spare parts.⁴³ The Derg also allowed several members of the Beta Israel community – the Jews of Ethiopia – to leave the country for Israel.⁴⁴ Before Mengistu managed to secure Soviet support, Israel tried to advocate on his behalf in the US and to mobilise President Jimmy Carter’s support for a strong Israeli–Ethiopian cooperation, but Carter was unconvinced and reportedly perplexed by the importance the Israelis attached to the issue.⁴⁵ The covert Israeli–Ethiopian relationship temporarily fell apart in early 1978, when Moshe Dayan, then Israel’s foreign minister, accidentally (or not) exposed it in an interview. The Derg responded in anger but admitted that the relationship existed because Israel was the only country that agreed to sell arms to Ethiopia.⁴⁶ According to Mossad veteran Yossi Alpher, Siad Barre, the president of Somalia, discreetly approached Israel, presumably hoping to attract Israeli and American support after the Soviets switched sides and abandoned him for Mengistu, but he was rebuffed.⁴⁷

Meanwhile, just across the border from Ethiopia and Somalia, cooperation between Israeli and Kenyan security and intelligence agencies was also maintained despite the lack of formal bilateral ties. This relationship was particularly close, allowing Israel to carry out in 1976 the famous ‘Operation Entebbe’. In July that year Israel sent its commando units to Uganda to raid Entebbe airport and release Israeli hostages that were held there after their plane was hijacked by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Kenya quietly provided support and allowed Israeli planes to refuel in Nairobi on their way back to Israel. In fact, earlier that same year, Israeli intelligence secretly cooperated with Kenya to thwart another attack by the PFLP – an attempt to shoot down an Israeli aircraft departing from Nairobi. Jomo Kenyatta was promised absolute confidentiality with regard to his country’s cooperation with Israel on the matter.⁴⁸