APA-Accra (Ghana) As the rest of the world sweat over a definitive resolution of the widening crisis between Israel and Hamas militants, Africa, a continent of 54 independent states has been struggling to present a common front.
African nations have occasionally bucked the trend when speaking with one voice on thorny global issues with implications for the continent such as climate change and debt cancellation, but it is back to the diplomatic building blocks.
The recent conflagration in the Middle East has seen them holding disparate positions once again informed by specific interests which on the face of it are not easily reconcilable.
These states have their own individual foreign policy agendas and priorities which sometimes find them in diametrically opposed camps given shifting geopolitical interests which are as diverse as can be imagined.
Since the October 7th incursion by the Palestinian militant sect Hamas on Israel, African countries have voiced support for one or the other. Others have been reticent while the carnage on both sides goes on.
South Africa and Algeria with long ties to the struggle of the Palestinian resisters have condemned Israel’s ”heavy-handed” response to the killing of its citizens.
Others with completely different policy motivations like Ghana, Kenya and the DR Congo have slammed the militants’ aggression as terrorism and adjudged that the Jewish state has an inalienable right to defend itself when aggressed.
Zambia has also made it unequivocally clear that she was backing Israel.
It may not be hard to see why continental heavyweights South Africa and Algeria may be pulling towards the Palestinian cause thanks to their own sordid experiences with apartheid on the one hand and a bloody independence struggle with colonialists on the other.
However Kenya thanks to a different experience feels an existential urge to throw her weight behind Israel despite the Jewish state drawing condemnation for its ”disproportionate response” with airstrikes that killed scores of unarmed Gazan civilians whose only crime was to be caught in the crosshairs of the conflict with Hamas.
East Africa’s biggest economy had been targeted by the Somali militant sect al-Shabaab in bloody retribution over the ‘implacable sins’ of contributing troops to a hybrid African Union peacekeeping force fighting the insurgents in Somalia for close to two decades.
The ensuing carnage when Hamas fighters struck Israel earlier this month must have conjured up gory images of Kenya’s own date with terror when severally Shabaab infiltrated its territory, killed hundreds of its citizens in cold blood and threatened an endless cycle of mindless violence thereafter.
These disparate interests and positions render the floating idea of a concerted continental foreign policy agenda a misnomer. It is understandably taking forever to gather steam as African countries react divisively to global issues. This collective diplomatic reductionism has ensured that Africa always punch dismally below its true weight thereby undermining its standing around the high table of global diplomacy even if the stakes are high.
The conspicuous silence of a nation like Ethiopia which has historically cultivated close ties with Israel and Egypt’s apparent ambivalence over the latest crisis next door underline the chasms that have sabotaged any residual attempts to right this imbalance and burnish the continent as a powerful player in the art of global diplomacy.
A country like Morocco which has normalised ties with Israel is left performing a delicate balancing act – tolerating the Jewish state without losing its sentiment of brotherhood toward the hapless Palestinians on whose cities bombs have rained since Israeli reprisals against Hamas began.
The African Union’s half-hearted role in championing a synchronized approach to the ‘cat and mouse’ game of world diplomacy has not helped to lend serious weight to the continent on the international scene. Moussa Faki Mahamat in his capacity as the African Union Commission chairperson sides with the Palestinians.
However despite coming out in support of one side, the AU has merely added to the divisive stalemate that has snuffed the living daylight out of the offshoots of a collective African diplomacy for decades. It is clear that the organisation was not speaking on behalf of more than half a dozen members backing a ‘different horse in the race’.
From a toehold to a foothold
Historically countries on the continent have identified with the Palestinian struggle to break free from the yoke of Israel. To underline this point leaders of the immediate post independence era established and maintained close ties with the Palestine Liberation Organisation whose officials were special guests in African capitals for a long time.
On the contrary Africa’s then newly independent nations in the 1960s developed a lukewarm attitude towards Israel and gave active support to the Palestinian cause.
However the shifting sands of diplomacy have witnessed a sea change over the past few decades as Israel went from securing a toehold in Africa of the 1970s to gaining a diplomatic foothold on a continent now seen by all and sundry as an important player in global affairs. Tel Aviv has for some time been scripting an ambitious foreign policy blueprint with the aim of wooing Africa and making sure their interest on the continent remains competitive and even rivals those of the traditional big players such as US, UK, China and France. To cap this charm offensive, in recent years more Israeli aid, game-changing technological offers and enticing military deals with countries on the continent have been too attractive for African countries to toss aside in one fell swoop. This is true notwithstanding their historically strong ties with the Palestinian people’s struggle for statehood.
Observers say as the conflict intensifies between Israel and Hamas, Africa’s interests will find fertile grounds to compete on the international stage and share the spoils. Whatever happens from then on, these countries would have played an indelible role in reshaping a volatile corner of the world with which they share close religious, cultural, economic, diplomatic and security ties, they add.
WN/as/APA