Israeli President Isaac Herzog has launched a short, unprecedented presidential swing through Africa, stopping in Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The one-day tour, according to Hebrew media, focused on current shifts in the international order and on reviving Israel’s global standing.
The timing is telling. Tel Aviv faces deepening political isolation as its war of extermination in Gaza draws sweeping condemnation and mounting allegations of grave breaches of international humanitarian law.
Across the last two years, African positions have notably consolidated against Israeli violations. From the Israeli viewpoint, this hardening stance threatens long-standing influence on the continent and, in their reading, demands urgent counter-moves.
Through this visit, Israel is seeking to prise open new channels of leverage inside Africa, to slow the erosion of its ties with a number of African states, and to rework a network of interests that might shield it from further isolation in multilateral forums. All this unfolds amid global geopolitical polarisation and ahead of critical UN milestones linked to the question of Palestine.
Whitewashing a Tarnished Image
The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas characterised the tour as a calculated attempt to rehabilitate Israel’s image after a dramatic collapse in its international standing over the past two years, driven by mass atrocities and systemic violations in Gaza.
In the movement’s view, Tel Aviv aims to deploy diplomatic outreach to Africa as a tool to blunt human rights criticism and to reclaim a measure of lost political legitimacy. By chipping away at Africa’s historic, principled support for Palestinian rights, Israel seeks to reshape the continental political landscape and to cultivate a more permissive environment for its policies.
Receiving Herzog at this moment, the movement argued, amounts in practice to participating in a process of sanitising the crimes committed in Gaza and normalising a continuing occupation. This comes despite the ongoing humanitarian fallout of the war and despite continuing violations of ceasefire understandings.
Hamas urged states worldwide to intensify political and diplomatic boycotts of Israel and its leaders. It called on African countries in particular to remain faithful to their anti-colonial heritage, stressing that the Israeli occupation continues to embody one of the starkest forms of contemporary colonialism.
International pressure now bearing down on Israel, from European capitals and even within the US establishment, is reshaping the political scene in Tel Aviv, regardless of attempts in Israeli media to downplay the effects. The erosion of trust between Israel and its traditional allies is no longer symbolic or merely moral. It has become a strategic variable that complicates the Israeli government’s calculations and pushes it to seek political breathing room outside its usual circuits.
Africa therefore appears as a deliberate choice, not only to upgrade relations or expand influence, but also as an alternative arena for assembling an international support canopy that can be activated in UN forums. The aim is to blunt accountability initiatives and human rights scrutiny.
In other words, Tel Aviv is trying to re-engineer its external network by rebuilding a supportive or at least malleable voting bloc inside the United Nations system. The goal is to rebalance a battered image and to cushion the impact of the exposure produced by the Gaza war and the widening political isolation that follows in its wake.
Why Africa, and Why Now
Tel Aviv understands that Africa constitutes a decisive voting mass in multilateral institutions, and that its weight in shaping international decisions has grown as global power dynamics shift. Losing that African reserve or allowing it to slide toward rival poles would be a costly political gamble for Israel. This urgency helps explain the rush toward African capitals now, in order to preserve remaining bridges to traditional partners and to prevent a collapse of influence networks.
The tour also carries a clear economic dimension. In the midst of a technology race linked to the future struggle over strategic minerals, African rare earths and critical mining resources cannot be ignored. These resources are already central to the global contest over inputs that will drive tomorrow’s defence and high-tech industries.
At the same time, Israel is moving to parry counter-expansion on the African stage. Tehran has deepened its footprint in several states, Russia has re-tooled its presence with new instruments after the Wagner phase, and China continues to intensify its financial and economic reach. Israeli activity should be read as part of an open contest to prevent adversaries from filling the vacuum.
The timing also intersects with a sensitive international phase inside UN bodies. Debates on Palestinian rights and the track of a two-state solution are intensifying, along with pressures linked to legal accountability of Israeli officials. Regaining an African base within the UN therefore looks like a pre-emptive step to shape voting and legitimacy before looming political and judicial battles.
Nor can this be separated from shifts within the continent itself, especially in the Sahel, where coups and power realignments in Mali and elsewhere have created fluid spaces. Tel Aviv sees an opportunity to reposition inside a changing geopolitical theatre and to re-shape alliances that stabilise its interests on one of the most sensitive global fronts in the coming period.
Two Years of Palestinian Solidarity
In the past two years, African solidarity with Gaza moved from symbolic empathy to a multi-level trajectory involving regional institutions, judicial avenues, and popular campaigns. The continent emerged as a leading defender of Palestinian rights internationally after Israel’s war beginning in October 2023.
At the African Union Summits in 2024 and 2025, continental positions escalated in tone and legal framing. The summits described the Israeli assault as a barbaric act amounting to genocide, called for urgent international action to halt the war, and urged robust sanctions on Tel Aviv.
Africa did not stop at political statements. It took unprecedented practical steps, including the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador in February 2024 and blocking Israel’s participation in AU summits, moving beyond the earlier suspension of observer status. This was a pivotal inflection point, signalling a fundamental shift in the continental political mood and sending an unambiguous moral message that Israel’s aggression is not a routine policy dispute but a case requiring active, institutional response.
The shift also paralleled a landmark legal drive led by South Africa before the International Court of Justice, backed by numerous African capitals. Solidarity widened to include media, culture, and civil society, turning Palestine into an ethical and human symbol in both popular and elite discourse.
Crucially, Africa’s stance did not emerge in a vacuum. It draws on deep historical memory that ties anti-colonial struggle to Palestinian rights. This inheritance has shaped a view of Gaza not as a distant dossier, but as a cause of liberation and human dignity that intersects with the continent’s own experience and sense of purpose.
Efforts to Fracture the African Wall
In recent years, Israel expanded its political, economic, and security presence in select African states. It exploited strategic interests, divergent national priorities, and global geopolitical shifts to produce relative breakthroughs that chipped away at Africa’s traditional pro-Palestine front. The result has been a shift from near-homogeneous solidarity to more variegated alignments that Tel Aviv can cultivate over time.
This fragmentation reflects Israel’s ability to operate inside political and economic gaps, to re-craft relationships built on exchanges of resources, technology, and security services. That in turn has reduced, though not dismantled, the firmness of Africa’s stance.
On 12 September 2025, as attention turned to the UN General Assembly vote on the New York Declaration, the continent faced a defining political moment. Two years after the Gaza war began, the roll call revealed unexpected divisions. Thirty-eight African states supported the declaration in favour of a two-state path, four abstained, and twelve were absent. This pattern was not a passing mood, but the cumulative effect of sustained Israeli activity aimed at eroding wartime cohesion.
Even with the overall pro-Palestine tenor, the four abstentions show that Israel has already penetrated sensitive circles through security, interests, and long-horizon partnerships.
Ethiopia, with demographic heft and as AU host, is enmeshed with Tel Aviv in files ranging from the Ethiopian Jewish community to technical roles in the Grand Renaissance Dam, security ties after the Tigray war, and tensions with Eritrea. These strands have encouraged Ethiopian elites to view Israel as a partner too costly to discard in a fragile internal and regional moment.
Cameroon and South Sudan illustrate a more direct dependency of political decision-making on Israeli security. In Yaoundé, Israeli units are a backbone of President Paul Biya’s security architecture, and influence extends from political cover into the coercive apparatus. In Juba, the very birth of the state unfolded under Israel’s recognition and support, with continuing arms deals and discreet interventions. Reports of proposals for Palestinian resettlement in South Sudan further entwine the relationship, making an anti-Israel vote perilous for regime stability.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Herzog’s second stop, embodies a delicate balance between traditional recognition of Palestine and security-mining interests with Israel. The country holds roughly 70 percent of global cobalt reserves, faces pressure from eastern insurgencies, and leans on Israeli expertise, trainers, and business networks such as Dan Gertler’s. Abstention there was less a flimsy stance than a calculated choice to protect regime interests.
These four abstentions reveal how Israel has engineered targeted breaches by combining security, arms, technology, and strategic interests. Re-securing African consensus for Palestine will require a counter-strategy equal to the layered influence Tel Aviv is building.
The Visit’s Bottom Line
Herzog’s stops in Zambia and the DRC amount to a disciplined attempt to break Israel’s international isolation, to restore continental influence, and to reshape alignments ahead of decisive UN battles over Palestine.
Tel Aviv knows that losing Africa means forfeiting one of the most consequential voting blocs inside the UN system. Any major continental shift, as seen at recent AU summits and in the New York Declaration vote, would accelerate Israel’s political and punitive isolation. Hence the drive to loosen Africa’s cohesion, to build partial alliances, and to deepen security and economic ties with select states. The aim is to weaken the pro-Palestine front gradually, not through direct confrontation, but through precise, localised inroads in strategically weighted places.
On the other side, keeping Africa aligned with Palestine cannot be left to Palestinians alone. It is an Arab and Islamic responsibility as well. What is needed is not a rhetorical posture but a sustained political, economic, and media investment that embeds Palestine as a cause of human liberation within African consciousness and activates practical partnerships across the continental architecture.
The contest in Africa is no longer symbolic. It is a struggle over real influence, often conducted with hard edges. Surrendering this theatre would mean forfeiting a central arena of leverage in the coming international order. The imperative, for Arab and Islamic actors, is a durable counter-strategy that keeps Africa within an ethical and political alignment with Palestine and blocks Tel Aviv’s rolling attempts to recycle the legitimacy of occupation under the veneer of diplomatic outreach.
