The Complex Twists and Turns of the Israel-South Africa Relations

The purpose of this article is to reveal the features of relations between Israel and South Africa in a historical retrospective with a focus on the South African Jewish community that is still the largest in the region. In contrast to relations with other African states, that went through stages from the “honeymoon” in the 1960s, the break in the early 1970s, to the new rapprochement in the 1990s – early 2000s, the interactions between Israel and South Africa had a completely different periodization. At first, the Israeli government did not develop contacts with the apartheid regime, but since the mid-1970s till the end of the 1980s, the governments were involved in a secret military cooperation. Since the early 1990s, Israel and South Africa began to build relations in a completely different international context. One of the main issues provoking tensions between the governments is the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The African National Congress has historically had close ties with the Palestine Liberation Organization, highlighting the fight against oppression as a common one. As part of its “return to Africa”, the Israeli government cannot ignore such a powerful player in the region as Pretoria. With mutual interests, the two sides can have a constructive dialogue, but the lack of progress in the settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will negatively affect the nature of their interaction. The author of this paper continues a series of works on the study of relations between Israel and African countries with the aim of filling the existing niche in Russian historiography.

Building a Proto-State on Quicksand: The Rise and Fall of the Palestinian State-in-Exile in Lebanon

In the wake of its relocation to Lebanon, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) transformed from a guerrilla force into a state-builder. This article explores this transition and argues that the creation of the Palestinian protostate in Lebanon was largely guided by the country's civil war–induced state collapse after 1975, which created both opportunities and needs that forced the Palestinian movement to engage in state-building. Enticed by new opportunities and constrained by the Lebanese Civil War's volatility, the Palestinian movement shifted its strategic priorities from cross-border campaigns against Israel to fighting within Lebanon. These new opportunities and needs also encouraged the PLO to transform itself into a semi-conventional force, which led to its defeat in 1982 and the collapse of the Palestinian proto-state.

THE PALESTINIAN CASE AND ITS PLACE ON RUSSIA’S FOREIGN POLICY AGENDA

The events of the “Arab spring” and its consequences as well as the “Iranian threat”, which became a key security challenge for the Gulf States, not without the efforts of Benjamin Netanyahu and supported by the pro-Israel Trump administration (2016-2020), seemed to have removed the Palestinian case from the priority list of Middle East issues. The role of Russia, the traditional partner of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) since Soviet times, also looked more low- key after the collapse of the Soviet Empire, especially amid resolution of the military-political crisis in Syria. Russian diplomacy on the Palestinian track remained unnoticed compared to the activity in the region of Donald Trump’s envoys, who promoted a peace plan for settling the Palestinian-Israeli conflict known as the “deal of the century”. Having failed to achieve the main goal, the White House contributed to the signing of the “The Abraham Accords”, which was a breakthrough given that the Arab states declared the solution of the Palestinian issue as precondition for formal relations with the Jewish state. If Arab-Israeli normalization continues, Israel will have peace treaties with more than half of the Arab and Muslim states despite the deadlock in the peace process with the Palestinians. Based on the analysis of political processes amid the unresolved Palestinian problem, and above all, Russia’s attempts as a mediator to achieve a settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the author suggests that the Palestinian issue has not lost its political significance and relevance as much as the Israeli government under Netanyahu tries to sell it.