Israeli Arms Will Block Food Shipments to Hungry Eritreans

By Rachelle Marshall

Americans who contribute to Ethiopian famine relief this year may end up paying not only for emergency food shipments but also for the weapons that will be used to destroy these shipments. As Dennis J. Wamsted pointed out in the January issue of the Washington Report, in 1990 US taxpayers will provide Israel with its usual aid package of $3 billion, much of which goes to support Israel's huge military establishment. Israel in turn has just agreed to give Ethiopia a variety of military equipment, including cluster bombs, in exchange for permission to establish an electronic listening post on the Dahlak Islands in the Red Sea and the emigration to Israel of 20,000 Ethiopian Jews, known as Falashas. According to the Sunday Times of London (Dec. 10), the Ethiopian air force has found cluster bombs to be the most effective weapon against truck convoys carrying food to the rebels of Eritrea and Tigre.

Because of the Ethiopian government's disastrous experiments with collective farming, and the 1989 drought, UN officials estimate that three to four million Ethiopians could die of hunger this year, half of them in Eritrea and Tigre. The San Francisco Examiner (Dec. 24) quoted relief workers as saying that the main problem of providing aid will be "logistical rather than financial," because of the bombing and strafing attacks on the food trucks. These attacks eased off considerably this year after the Soviet Union ended its arms supply agreement with Ethiopia and withdrew its military advisers, but with the arrival of new supplies of cluster bombs and other weapons from Israel in early December, they are expected to resume. On Jan. 23 The New York Times reported that Israel had assured the US that it was not providing cluster bombs to Ethiopia, but the Times added that a State Department spokeswoman "was unable to say whether the assurance covered past shipments."

Meanwhile, peace talks between the government of President Mengistu Haile Mariam and Tigrean and Eritrean rebels have recently stalled, apparently because Mengistu is counting on the infusion of Israeli arms to salvage his faltering military position. If the peace talks break down completely, the Israeli arms deal will have fueled the continuance of a war that has been underway since 1961, when the Eritrea Liberation Front (ELF) was formed in order to prevent full annexation of Eritrea by Ethiopia. Eritrea had been an entirely separate territory, formerly an Italian colony, until the UN attached it to Ethiopia in 1953. Although the ELF includes Christians, it is predominantly Muslim, like neighboring northern Sudan, and associates itself with the Arab world. Consequently Israel is reluctant to see an independent Eritrea on the shores of the Red Sea.

The rebels in Tigre have been fighting the Mengistu government since it overthrew Haile Selassie in 1974, and reportedly aim to replace Ethiopia's Marxist government with an even more rigid communist regime, patterned after Albania's. Under growing pressure from international relief agencies, Mengistu agreed in late December to permit food shipments to Tigre province. But in making this concession, Ethiopian foreign minister Tesfaye Dinka pointedly left out any mention of Eritrea, where the need for food is just as urgent.

Arms for Emigres

The exchange of arms for Falasha emigres and a base in the Dahlak Islands provides Israel with both a strategic bonanza and a public relations coup. The deal gives Israel a listening post just off the coast of Eritrea, not far from Asmara, where the United States had a similar installation from 1953 until Mengistu ordered it dismantled in 1977.

The Dahlak Islands are strategically located near the Horn of Africa, in a line with the Gulf of Aqaba to the north and close to Saudi Arabia and Yemen on the west and southwest. According to the Northern California Jewish Bulletin (Dec. 15), 200 Israeli soldiers and technicians are already building a runway and installing electronic devices on the islands. They are also training Ethiopian soldiers and repairing military hardware for the Ethiopian army.

In concluding an agreement that condemns thousands in Ethiopia to starvation and prolongs a bloody civil war just when a negotiated end seemed possible, Israel, paradoxically, will be able to claim it is performing a humanitarian act. Pro-Israel spin doctors are already hailing the agreement as an act of mercy on behalf of the Falashas and downplaying the arms bargain. The report in the Jewish Bulletin, for instance, was headlined "Deal Is Cut to Rescue Jews Stuck in Ethiopia." The headline of a similar news story in the Sunday Times of London read, "Israel and Ethiopia in Gun Deal."

The Falashas who are able to move to Israel are undoubtedly fortunate. They will be leaving one of the poorest countries in the world, many of them to rejoin families separated in 1985 when 8,000 Ethiopian Jews were flown to Israel in Operation Moses. But they will not be heading for a land of milk and honey. About a third of the Ethiopians who came to Israel in 1985 still live in crowded absorption centers, and their leaders complain that not enough money is being spent to house them. The new wave of Ethiopians will now have to compete for re settlement funds with the thousands of Soviet Jews expected to arrive during the coming months.

Israel has much to gain from the new immigration, despite the difficulty of assimilating people from an entirely different culture. As in the past, Israeli spokesmen will undoubtedly use it as an opportunity to enhance Israel's image as a haven for the world's beleaguered Jews. They are also certain to claim that the welcoming of Black Jews to Israel proves that Zionism is not racist.

For Jewish organizations in the United States and Western Europe, the need to resettle the Ethiopian immigrants is a heaven-sent excuse for intensified fundraising, especially among those Diaspora Jews who respond willingly to humanitarian appeals but have become increasingly reluctant to support the hard-line Israeli government.

Finally, until they acquire language and other skills, many of the Ethiopian newcomers will be a source of cheap labor, avail able to replace thousands of Palestinians who are forced by economic restrictions in the West Bank and Gaza to take low-paid jobs in Israel. If Ethiopians take these jobs they will provide Israel, however unwittingly, with yet another weapon against the intifada.

A Trusted Ally?

For US policymakers, Israel's arms deal with Ethiopia should raise the question of whether a truly reliable ally would give support to an oppressive and incompetent Marxist dictatorship in an area of vital strategic importance. Israel has recently acted to counter US policy objectives in at least two other areas as well. Last November Israel completed a deal to buy $36 million worth of oil from Iran and to sell Iran military spare parts, even though the United States is boycotting that country as a "terrorist state." In December, Washington thought it worthwhile to launch an invasion of Panama in order to bring Manuel Noriega to trial as a drug trafficker. Noriega's closest adviser and alleged business partner was former Israeli reserve officer and top Mossad official Mike Harari. Several months ago the Israeli government reportedly refused a US request to recall him to Israel.

In 1973, J. Bowyer Bell wrote in Horn of Africa that Israel was aiding the rebellion in southern Sudan against the Muslim government in the north in order to prevent Sudan from playing a meaningful role in Middle Eastern affairs. According to Bell, "Of all the great international issues, the Israeli-Arab confrontation is most dangerous to the Horn...The immediate strategic interests of the Powers vary. For Israel they are vital." Bell concluded that Ethiopia was Israel's natural ally in the area because Ethiopia had "a historic suspicion of Islam and the Arabs."

Today, 17 years later, Israel is still making alliances with regimes such as Ethiopia's and Iran's in an effort to destabilize an Arab world with which it refuses to come to terms. So it is probably fair to say that the tens of thousands who will die of hunger in Eritrea this year are victims not only of failed harvests but of the failed Middle East peace process as well.

Rachelle Marshall is a free-lance editor living in Stanford, CA. She is a member of New Jewish Agenda, and writes frequently on the Middle East.