ADDIS ABABA (Dispatches) -- The African Union has said that the occupying regime of Israel’s observer status at the bloc was suspended which is why it was not invited to attend the weekend summit.
The news comes after Israeli ambassador Sharon Bar-li was removed from the African Union’s annual summit in Ethiopia on Saturday as she attempted to attend using a non-transferable invitation issued only to the occupying regime’s ambassador to the African Union, Aleli Admasu.
Video circulating on social media showed guards escorting Bar-li out of the AU assembly hall in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.
“The status is suspended until such time as this committee can deliberate … and so we did not invite Israeli officials to our summit,” AU Commission chief Moussa Faki Mahamat told reporters, adding that an investigation was being conducted into Saturday’s incident.
A spokesperson for the Zionist foreign ministry said Bar-li was “an accredited observer with an entry tag”, and accused the AU of being taken hostage by a “small number of extremist states like Algeria and South Africa, which are driven by hatred and controlled by Iran”.
The incident highlighted a spat within the pan-African bloc over a unilateral 2021 decision by Mahamat to give Israel observer status, triggering protests by several member states.
The occupying regime of Israel obtained observer status after two decades of lobbying. It had previously held the role at the Organization of African Unity (OAU) but was long thwarted in its attempts to regain it after the OAU was disbanded in 2002 and replaced by the AU.
Last year’s AU summit suspended a debate on whether to withdraw the accreditation and established a committee of heads of state to address the issue.
The South African government said the African Union’s decision to award Israel the status was “even more shocking in a year in which the oppressed people of Palestine were hounded by destructive bombardments and continued illegal settlements of the land”.
South Africa backs the Palestinian cause, with formal diplomatic relations established in 1995, a year after the end of apartheid. It downgraded its embassy in Tel Aviv to a liaison office in 2019.
Algeria spearheaded diplomatic efforts to rescind the Zionist regime’s observer status last year. The pan-African bloc postponed holding a vote on a final decision until this year’s summit.
The Palestinian Authority, which was granted AU observer status in 2013, has repeatedly urged African leaders to withdraw Israel’s AU accreditation, denouncing its “apartheid regime”.