In late August, government officials from Zambia and Israel assembled to celebrate the reopening of the Israeli embassy in Lusaka. It was the first time in 52 years that an Israeli flag would be raised in the Zambian capital, following a long period of severed ties.“Israel is returning to Zambia. Israel is returning to Africa,” Gideon Saar, the Israeli foreign affairs minister, who had flown into the country for the event and led the ribbon-cutting, declared in a post on X. Undoubtedly, for Saar, this was a true feat, coming at a time when much of the world is isolating Israel due to its devastating onslaught on the Gaza Strip. Israeli media hailed the move as a triumph. One called the small Southern African country Israel’s “next great Africa frontier”.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list“Many countries in Africa are lining up for Israel to open an embassy in their capitals, these days,” Saar boasted in a speech at the ceremony. “We choose to begin in Zambia.”The reopening event appears to be part of a series of calculated moves by Israel to pull African nations to its side at a time when its global standing is damaged, experts say.Israel’s war on Gaza, labelled in mid-September as a genocide by a United Nations panel of inquiry, has seen Israel kill at least 66,055 Palestinians and level almost every part of the St …
