Democratic Palestine : 26 (ص 29)
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- Democratic Palestine : 26 (ص 29)
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demned the cooperation between
‘Israel’ and the apartheid regime in
South Africa.
The Arab nationalist regimes are also
called upon to confront the Zionist
penetration of Africa. They should
summits and study the means for con-
tinuing the boycott of the Zionist state.
Strengthening relations between the
nationalist and progressive forces and
regimes in Africa and the Arab world,
in cooperation with the socialist coun-
worldwide, will not only confront the
Zionist penetration of Africa. It will
establish a basis for common struggle
to abolish Zionist, imperialist and reac-
tionary presence both in Africa and the
Arab world.
raise this issue at all coming Arab tries and
liberation
movements @
‘Israel’
In)
Africa
Part of US Global Strategy
Israeli Prime Minister Shamir’s June visit to Africa was the latest step in the Zionist state’s drive to restore
relations with Black Africa. While specific Israeli political, economic and military aims are involved, the
overriding aspect of this venture is reconstructing a project begun in the sixties whereby the US funded
Israeli aid to African states as a means of perpetuating neocolonialism on the continent.
The new phase of cooperation in Africa was hatched at
Camp David, as part of the US-Zionist globally-oriented
strategic alliance. This aims to bolster reactionary regimes,
such as the one in Zaire, against the tide of national liberation
sweeping southern Africa. Training Mobutu’s armed forces is
not an isolated Israeli enterprise. In the early eighties, Zaire
doubled the size of its army and received substantial US
military aid. The importance the Reagan Administration at-
taches to Zaire’s military role was underlined in April when US
army special forces staged an exercise with Zaire troops at the
Kamina air base in Shaba province in the south of the country,
site of great mineral wealth and repeated revolts against
Mobutu’s rule. Kamina «is reportedly the installation the CIA
has been using to transfer the bulk of $15 million in covert
military aid to Mr. Jonas Savimbi’s guerrilla forces (UNITA)
fighting the Angolan Government» (Guardian, April 20,
1987). Counterrevolution in Africa is an ever more urgent
imperialist-Zionist concern as the mass struggle against the
apartheid regime in South Africa gains irreversible momen-
tum.
On the diplomatic plane, initial Israeli success in restoring
diplomatic relations with Zaire (1982) and Liberia (1983) was
followed by a lull until 1986 when President Houphouet-
Boigny of the Ivory Coast, who advocates relations with South
Africa and has even met Foreign Minister Botha, reopened an
embassy in occupied Palestine. However, Zionist political,
economic and military activities have been ongoing in step with
renewed US interest in vitalizing the 1981 agreement signed
with ‘Israel’ on joint ventures in Africa. In 1983, teams from
the US State Department and Israeli Foreign Ministry began
regular meetings on African affairs. Secretary of State Schultz
reportedly ordered US embassies in Africa to be at the disposal
of Israeli representatives. With the November 29, 1983 US-
Israeli memorandum of understanding on strategic coopera-
tion, a joint political - military committee was formed to
coordinate activities in the ‘third world’. New agreements
allow for US aid recipients to use these funds for purchasing
Israeli weapons. In 1984, the US Congress approved a $2
million package for setting up the US-Israeli Cooperative
Development Research program (CDR). According to the
Jerusalem Post, December 28, 1984, this will provide US fun-
ding for Israeli efforts to solve ‘third world’ problems via the
US Agency for International Development (AID) - often a
conduit for CIA-inspired projects.
«Israel has also become a participant in the newly-created
and somewhat mysterious US Presidential Task Force on In-
ternational Private Enterprise. Israeli Foreign Ministry
Director-General David Kimche (one-time Mossad operative
and more recently participant in the Iran/contragate affair)
testified before the Task Force in early October - the only non-
American to do so. Kimche subsequently reported that he had
achieved ‘an important breakthrough’ for US financing of
Israeli projects in developing countries» (Israeli Foreign Af-
fairs, February 1985). All in all, the Zionists’ activities in
Africa are merely the other side of the coin of their role in the
US’s global aggressive schemes, such as funding the contras in
Nicaragua.
AID OR SABOTAGE?
Besides shielding the Pretoria regime from its inevitable
demise, the Israeli role in Africa has served a variety of the
Reagan Administration’s pet schemes, such as the vicious
campaign against Libya. To this purpose, covert Israeli efforts
were joined with French intervention in the civil war in Chad,
at a time when Libya was backing the opposition to Habre’s
regime. In August 1983, troops from Zaire landed in Chad’s
capital, Ndjamena, and took delivery of $10 million in US
arms; they were accompanied by Israeli advisors (Israeli
Foreign Affairs, July/August 1985). Zaire troops trained in
‘Israel’ trained the French-backed Habre forces. In the 1983
Vittel Franco-African summit, ‘Israel? encouraged Habre and
Mobutu to go against the prevailing consensus among African
states, by rejecting a negotiated settlement in favor of trying to
reconquer the areas held by the opposition. With Israeli
guidance, Mobutu has also proposed a new organization of
sub-Saharan states, ostensibly as a counterpart to the Arab
League, but actually as a device for weakening the OAU and
African - Arab friendship.
Israeli relations with Liberia were also restored parallel to
the Chadean civil war as both the US and ‘Israel’ tried to
employ President Doe in their anti-Qaddafi plan. These rela-
tions were also turned against the progressive nationalist
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