By Gaia S
On a bright October morning in 1966, Dawda Kairaba Jawara stepped off a plane at Lod Airport and into the embrace of Israel’s highest officials. Prime Minister Levi Eshkol was there, flanked by Education Minister Zalman Aran and a guard of honour. Cameras rolled as Jawara, just eighteen months into Gambia’s independence, was saluted and escorted to Jerusalem. At his side were senior Gambian ministers, among them Paul Baldeh and Assan Musa Camara, who at the time held the Education, Labour and Social Welfare portfolio. In Jerusalem Jawara and Eshkol exchanged documents of friendship — a treaty that pledged Israeli experts in agriculture, irrigation and education, alongside training programmes and scholarships for Gambian students. Jawara, a secular leader with deep ties to Britain and America, spoke of resolving conflicts “by peaceful means,” linking the Middle East to other troubled parts of the world. For him, building ties with Israel was statecraft: securing partners for a fragile new nation.
That balance could not last. In 1973, after the Yom Kippur War, African states moved in solidarity with the Arab world, and Gambia joined the wave in breaking ties with Israel. From then, Jawara leaned toward the Palestinian cause, but with caution. It was only in November 1988 that Gambia formally recognised the State of Palestine, twenty-three years after independence and in step with the international wave following the PLO’s declaration. Some call that a delay, but Jawara’s hesitation reflected pressures from London and Washington. By the time Banjul acted, it was in fact ahead of Britain itself.
Yahya Jammeh rejected such caution. In 1999 he broke relations with Israel outright, and at the United Nations he thundered that Israel was committing “genocide against the Palestinian people.” He called for sanctions and boycotts, presenting himself as one of Africa’s loudest defenders of Palestine. It was fiery and theatrical, but it gave Jammeh the image of a leader unafraid to challenge the West.
Adama Barrow has brought Gambia back to a gentler pragmatism. Hosting the OIC summit in Banjul and filing a statement to the ICJ on the occupation, he has kept Gambia pro-Palestinian. Yet with the UK, Ireland, Spain and now Canada recognising Palestine, Barrow looks less like a leader setting direction and more like one following the tide.
Jawara was pragmatic, Jammeh was theatrical, and Barrow appears reactive. One built Gambia’s place with diplomacy, another shook it with fire, and the third risks being remembered as simply carried along by global currents.
