Arabs campaign to keep Israel from gaining foothold in Africa
After Togo postponed the African-Israel Summit, Arab efforts continue to permanently cancel the event.
CAIRO — Arab efforts to foil the African-Israel Summit that had been scheduled for Oct. 23-27 in Togo's capital, Lome, have met with some success and are multiplying. The summit's theme is “Israel is coming back to Africa, and Africa is coming back to Israel,” but currently no one is going anywhere.
The effort against the event had been underway for months when Togo President Faure Gnassingbe told Israel in September the summit would be postponed so organizers could make better preparations. Opponents of the meeting, including Palestinians, claimed their protests led to the indefinite delay, though many observers, including Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon, attribute the change to growing unrest in Togo, where there have been fierce protests against Gnassingbe’s rule.
The latter seems ironic, as the summit's website promotes Togo as "a beacon of political and economic stability."
The Arab Parliament has been supporting efforts to derail the summit and announced back in July that it would ask political leaders not to attend. According to an Oct. 5 statement from the Arab Parliament, its leader Mishaal bin Fahm Al-Salami sent a special envoy to Tanzania, Ethiopia and Cameroon asking those parliaments to support a boycott. The statement emphasized Israel is the only country in the world occupying the lands of a whole people and persecuting them through blockade, forced displacement and arrest. The Arab Parliament also said it sent official boycott requests via letters to other African countries' parliaments, but it hasn't revealed the results yet.
