Algeria and South Africa’s dynamic diplomacy on Palestinian cause
Doctrinally, Algeria and South Africa’s dynamic diplomacy on Palestine determinants emanate from its foreign policy principles’ doctrine: peoples’ right of self-determination. Fifty years ago, at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York City, then-Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) chairperson and late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat was invited to the 29th session of the UNGA. This happened in 1974 when the UNGA elected Algeria to the U.N. as a nonpermanent member to serve at the U.N. Security Council (UNSC); half a century later, Algeria served again for a two-year term that began in January.
This marks Algeria’s fourth term as an elected member of the UNSC, holding one of three African seats and representing Arab countries exclusively. Algeria has recently emerged as a staunch advocate for the Palestinian cause within the UNSC, particularly amid ongoing conflicts in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank, as well as daily military incursions in al-Quds.
On March 25, Algeria sponsored a resolution for the second time since its election, calling for an immediate cease-fire to establish a sustainable peace. The resolution garnered 14 votes in favor, with the United States abstaining, marking a significant diplomatic achievement for Algeria despite previous vetoes by Washington on three resolutions, including Algeria’s proposal last month. In this regard, Algeria’s U.N. representative Amar Bendjamaa said in his speech after the UNSC vote: “We will return to the council ... to request that Palestine will be in the place it deserves, a full and sovereign member of the U.N. Last November Algeria called on the ICC to hold Israel accountable for its crimes in Gaza Strip.”
The Algerian nationalist and conservative elite is linking Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on Oct. 7 with the Nov. 1 Operation, the Algerian liberation war night sparked against the French colonial state army and European settlers in occupied Algeria in 1954.
In June 1988, Algeria held an Arab leaders summit named the “Al-Intifada Summit,” led by President Chadli Bendjedid. At this summit, only one issue was on the agenda: supporting the Palestinian Intifada in the occupied Palestinian territories. Later, in November 1988, the Palestinian National Council met in Algiers and announced the “Declaration of Independence,” which proclaimed the State of Palestine with alQuds as its capital.
In 2022, Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune took the initiative in the internal Palestinian division between Hamas and the PLO leaders, which broke out in 2007 when Hamas forcibly took over the Gaza Strip from the Fatah movement. President Abdelmadjid Tebboune organized the meeting of unity between the two rival leaders on the sidelines of the celebrations marking the 60th anniversary of Algeria’s independence from France on July 5, 2022.
THIRD-WORLD DIPLOMACY
In light of this, Algeria established a clear official position on the Palestine cause. In the winter of 2020, the administration of Donald Trump, former U.S. president and the Republican Party’s hopeful candidate in the 2024 presidential election, announced the details of the political portion of its plan to “solve” the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, a plan known broadly as the “Deal of the Century.” Tebboune, in his first UNGA international speech from his office in al-Mouradia Palace in Algiers, strongly criticized the Abraham Accords with Israel, emphasizing that Algeria will never try fast to join the “normalization” process. A process seems to be established to bury the Palestinian cause for good.
Like Algeria, South Africa, another pivotal African state, has become an international voice for the Palestinians. Algeria’s “third world foreign policy paradigm” did give it legitimacy to position itself in the equation of occupation, acculturation, resistance, revolutionary and independence imperative; in other words, developing the oppressors-oppressed relations envisioned by the two imminent postmodern thinkers Frantz Fanon and Edward Said toward decolonization and Orientalism.
Pretoria suspended diplomatic ties with Tel-Aviv before taking the country to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on genocide accusations. Thus, the African National Congress (ANC) has shown rigorous solidarity with the Palestinian cause from the 1950s to the 1960s. Likewise, the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) military wing inspired both resistance movement organizations’ military wings via the Algerian National Liberation Army’s (ALN) military tactics and strategy. Both military organizations were trained by Algeria’s People’s National Army (ANP) after the independence in 1962 on Algerian soil.
Former South African President Nelson Mandela was an ardent freedom fighter in the early days of Black South Africa’s liberation struggle against the brutal policies of the Apartheid regime in Pretoria and the Afrikaner settlers in the country. In December 1961, he cofounded the ANC’s military wing, uMkhonto we Sizwe. In the same year, Mandela visited the ALN based in Morocco before finally establishing uMkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the ANC.
SOLIDARITY IN STRUGGLE
Algeria was also the first country Mandela visited after he was released from prison in 1990. This was a symbolic gesture to acknowledge the inspiration he drew from Algeria’s liberation war struggle against the French colonial state in 1954-1962. In 1975, Algeria did sponsor a resolution equating Zionism with racism; in Mandela’s autobiography “Long Walk to Freedom,” he compares the Algerians’ state of being and situation during the 132 years of occupation as the closest to that of the ANC in South Africa.
He met with PLO Chair Arafat wearing the Keffiyeh, an emblematic symbol of Palestinian political identity. In 1997, Mandela called Arafat a “figure,” saying, “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”
In this stance, Algeria did manage to bridge between the ANC and the PLO cause regionally and internationally.
That being so, post-Apartheid regime South Africa was among the first countries to qualify Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands and segregation policies as apartheid. Further, the Apartheid regime in South Africa, led by the racist Afrikaners National Party, had a close relationship with Israeli leaders. In the 1970s, Israel’s government under Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin formed close ties with the Apartheid regime in Pretoria. Israel’s then-Defense Minister Shimon Peres was instrumental in creating an alliance that helped keep apartheid atrocities drifting while the international community grew increasingly critical and isolated the Apartheid regime.
Israel, however, did supply the Apartheid regime in South Africa with military advisors, equipment, training and intelligence in their fights against the resistance organization and ANC members and sympathizers at large.
In sum, in this ideological and south-south solidarity context, Algeria and South Africa remain prominent defenders of the Palestinian cause and struggle against harsh occupation and racist policies in occupied Palestine. Consequently, Fanon’s famous work “The Wretched of the Earth” is still a credible literature source that helps better understand people’s right to selfdetermination and the struggle for decolonization. Therefore, the indestructible continuing violence of occupation in Palestine is like Fanon described the violence of the French colonial state in Algeria during the occupation of Algeria, writing about genocide as the eliminating the Algerian population, erasing their national identity and racial segregation. These are similar to the practices that have been taking place in Palestine since 1948, and in South Africa during the Apartheid regime 1948-1994, but with Algeria’s dynamic diplomacy, Palestinians today and all the oppressed people in the world will never walk alone.