Avoiding crisis in Africa over the Middle East

TWO MAJOR TERMINOLOGIES that have assumed prominence in global geopolitical and social settings are “antisemitism” and “islamophobia.” Events over the years have shown many things about these two expressions arising over events emanating from the Middle East, a region that is made up of about 190 million people, of which 43 million — or 23 per cent — are non-Muslims, while the remaining 147 million or 77 percent are Muslims, constituting the majority.  The expressions, which have gained currency worldwide, have been subjected to abuse, misuse, conflation and have been utilised as cheap propaganda tools at various times under various circumstances for convenience and mischief. It has become clear that many users of antisemitism and islamophobia have vague and superficial understanding of their practical implications. For instance, many users of islamophobia try to imply that it means any action against the Arabs as if Arab and Islam are always interchangeable.

It is becoming clearer that these two expressions will play decisive roles in shaping global affairs in the coming years as previous and current events have shown and as nations of the world embark on diplomatic alignments or realignments in either direct or indirect response to Middle East geopolitics, the most recent of which is the war between Palestinians and Israel. It began on Saturday, October 7, 2023 when Hamas, the Islamic hardline militiamen — known as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad — in power in Gaza Strip invaded communities in southern Israel in a brutal manner, killing and abducting hundreds of Israeli civilians, while raping and dehumanising many in their homes in what the invaders called “al-Aqsa flood.” Hamas’s Operation, as the name suggests, was motivated by a central focus on the al-Aqsa Mosque and Israeli aggression against the Palestinians. Events in the al-Aqsa compound — seen as an important symbol of Palestinian identity — frequently spark conflict between Israel and Hamas.

For its symbolism and widespread appeal, therefore, the Hamas invaders chose to use the name of the mosque in describing the motives behind their operations, obviously intending to create and pass subliminal messages relating to religion and appeal to Islamic sentiments in the process. To an extent, they have achieved that. What they failed to anticipate, however, was the fact that the Muslim population in the whole world may not act as a monolithic unit in support of the slaughter of hundreds of Israeli civilians in such a horrendous manner and may not fully take sides with the Hamas on that score, even if they harbour some hidden sympathy. Although the Palestinians in Gaza Strip have endured years of hardship, especially under the upper hands of Israel, this al-Aqsa flood strategy may have proved to be a major strategic miscalculation as Israel has chosen to mete out disproportionate responses over the past one month and appears unrelenting in its continued counteroffensive against Gaza Strip in its pursuit of the Hamas that wields state power and projects Islamic Identity. This calls for unequivocal disclaimers from the Muslim community if they truly believe that Hamas is acting as a terrorist group, except they privily approved what Hamas has done.

What many analysts and commentators on the Hamas-Israeli conflicts need to know is the need to be circumspect over the handling of the crisis in retrospect, in the present and in the future. While some countries have swallowed the pills of Palestinians versus Israel in a narrow sense, some others construed it from the wider perspective of Arab versus Israel. Others, on one hand, see the crisis through the lenses of Islamophobia while many others — on the other hand — interpret it as antisemitism. While the use of all of these expressions have their justifications in  both parochial and broad senses, depending on the users, it appears like most users care less about the wider implications for the Middle East and the world. Some countries, exhibiting duplicity in their treatment of terrorism, prefer complicity and silence over the terror attacks unleashed on Israel by Hamas on October 7, choosing rather to describe it as an expression of resistance. Particularly worrisome and disappointing has been the United Nations (UN) in its timid and knee jerk reactions to the Palestinian-Israeli crisis over the years, with the ineffectual two-state solution. The UN has demonstrated its weaknesses on the implementation of the two-state solution that was proposed by the 1993 Oslo Accords. The Jews and Arabs both claimed the right to self-determination in historical Palestine after the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

But, in 1993 Oslo Accords, Yasser Arafat, then leader of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), embraced the two-state solution, just as did Israel’s then prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in an initiative spearheaded by Shimon Peres. This was in spite of the non-implementation of the 1947 UN General Assembly-adopted Partition Plan for Palestine. However, the Palestinian leadership has embraced the concept since the 1982 Arab Summit in Fez Morocco. In 2017, Hamas accepted the idea of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, but without recognising the statehood of Israel. This alone poses an implementation problem given more prominence by the creed propagated by Hamas, which is the total annihilation of Israel. On the other hand, Israel considered Palestinian leaders’ statements and actions  on international recognition of a State of Palestine as being unilateral action by the Palestinians and inconsistent with a negotiated two-state solution. Although polls had consistently shown Israeli and Palestinian majorities in favour of a negotiated two-state settlement, it appears like the widening divisions and heightening of crises are orchestrated at the leadership levels on both sides of the divide as the fervour about the two-state solution dwindled and was replaced by growing disillusionment.

If the October 2023 surprise attack on Israeli civilians was directly linked to that of 1973 with an intention of bringing Israel to its knees, begging for the release of those abducted, it was probably a huge miscalculation. To have chosen the 50th anniversary of what Arabs consider to be a great triumph against Israel and to think the Palestinian resistance wanted to send a clear message that the cause of Palestine remains the cause of all Arabs could as well have missed the mark. The top Hamas military commanders and political leaders, in their references to Arab countries and peoples since October, and their statements that the deaths of civilians killed during the subsequent Israeli invasion of Gaza, are seeking to justify Palestinian cause. They have also resorted to calling for the support of the wider Muslim global community.

To a remarkable extent, food and energy will shape the outcome of the geopolitics around Israel and Palestine and particularly the ongoing conflict in Gaza. A repeat of 1973 Oil Embargo will fail if contemplated this time as the world relentlessly pursues energy transition, energy efficiency, diversification of energy sources and strong advocacy against continued use of fossil fuels because of the environmental consequences, particularly climate change and global warming. The reports after the global COVID-19 lockdown have shown that fossil fuels contribute on a large scale to global warming. The shift in emphasis from fossil fuels therefore deprives the Middle East and Arab countries, the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and other sympathisers of Arab politics against Israel of the monopoly over energy and the international politics associated with it as well any intended economic rupture in countries sympathetic towards Israel as a punishment. It thus presupposes that the climate Conference of Parties (COP) 28 taking place in Dubai this November will elicit clearer forebodings of looming diminishing oil wealth for the Middle East as renewable energy sources take over from fossil fuels. The countries that hold the ace in energy transition are the Western countries, China and Japan that churn out products that depend on renewable energy. Take the automobile industry. In compliance with the future projections and the need for responsiveness on environmental sustainability, the automobile manufacturers are shifting production emphasis from combustion engines into electric vehicles or hybrids involving hydrogen. As more and more automobile manufacturers set dates for discontinuation of manufacturing of combustion engine vehicles, the oil economy is bound to experience serious setbacks and nations that depend solely on oil production for sustaining their economies will experience economic downturn that may prove irreversible.

Moreover, most of the Middle East and Arab North African countries are net food importers, worried about the prospects of feeding their population in the future. Head or tail, the Middle East might boil again anytime, like in the 2011 Arab Spring that toppled some regimes, like in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, and led to protracted wars in some others, such as Yemen and Syria, triggered when food price and availability become a political issue again. In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), wheat is the main staple food and the region is heavily dependent on food imports, especially staples like wheat, which constitutes the staple food of the national diet of Iranian households, who draw, on average, 47 per cent of their daily calorie from wheat products. The MENA region has been seriously impacted by the war in Ukraine since last year when Russia invaded on February 24, affecting rather negatively the wheat supply to the region.

Just as growing population and increased number of urban dwellers will cause an increase in the amount of nutritious food and might again spark social unrest if there arises any bout of food shortage or sharp food price inflation, more pressure will be brought to bear on certain food production inputs and end products. Governments of the MENA region will have to contend with the tasks of  providing supplies for the food market estimated at more than $35 billion — and growing daily. They import from mostly non-Muslim Western countries and might need to continue the importation at a far higher scale in the future. For instance, a bulk of soyabean in use for dairy, beef and poultry production in the MENA region is imported. Overall, the main beef importers by volume are Egypt and Iran, followed by Saudi Arabia, UAE, Algeria and Israel. The bulk of beef imports come from Brazil and India, with the former surpassing the latter as the leading supplier by volume since 2015. The Middle East imports roughly 90 per cent of the beef and beef products that it consumes. The six Middle East Gulf states enjoy some of the world’s highest per capita incomes and population growth rates, creating greater demands for imported foods. A recent report of last October quoted Australian government data as showing that Australia annually exports red meat worth about A$550 million ($350 million) to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) group of countries each year. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are the three largest importers of whole milk powder, butter, and cheese in that region, with the Middle East dairy market expected to reach $18.20 billion in 2023 and grow at a CAGR of 4.30 per cent to reach $23.43 billion by 2029.

A web of interrelationship has been woven between the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa in terms of food dependence. Apart from Israel that exports food to many parts of Africa, the rest of the Middle East countries remain as net food importers. In anticipation of the future, and borne out of food security fears and to buffer themselves against inflationary pressure, some Middle East — particularly the wealthy Gulf — countries have become heavy investors that have established investments in, and purchased, huge swaths of African farmlands for outsourcing food  production, to be repatriated (not regarded as exports) to the Middle East. In Sudan, the largest single-country investor is Saudi Arabia, with about half of all foreign investment. Other Middle Eastern investors in African land include Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). A 2009 report quoted the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) as reporting that Saudi Arabia purchased as much as 500,000 hectares of land in Tanzania for farming. In the first half of 2022, Tanzania reportedly exported a record 10,000 tonnes of meat to the Middle East. Without any attempt to downplay the killings of in Gaza, many African countries have experienced massacres of greater scales by islamist jihadists and terrorist groups without any serious attention, concerns or protests within the international community, perhaps because — among other things — their ordeals never enjoyed as much media coverage as that of Israeli-Gaza conflicts. Even then, the events that preceded the Israeli offensive has been overshadowed by the reports emanating from Gaza.

The ongoing Saudi Summit might be involved in either finding ways round the Hamas-Israeli conflict or in seeking to escalate it, depending on the dispositions of those involved in discussions or how they choose to handle hard facts on reality at their disposal. Much depends on the realisation of the futility of continuing to adopt a hardline approach to the crisis by any country in support of either side to the conflict. African countries’ leaders must thus be circumspect in their diplomatic relations, engagements and alignments during and after the ongoing conflicts to avoid what may turn out to become collateral damage for the continent and the Middle East.