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ANFET-Editorial
Date: September 23, 2025
ANFET EDITORIAL extends its unwavering solidarity to the people of Palestine in their just struggle for statehood, dignity, and self-determination.
Our own history as Eritreans compels us to stand firmly with the oppressed. Eritrea was liberated from Italian colonial rule in 1941 by the Allied forces, and for a decade remained under British administration. In the 1940s, as the State of Israel was recognized, the struggles of Eritrea and Palestine were intertwined—both peoples yearning for independence and freedom.
Yet, during the 1960s, as Eritreans waged their armed struggle for liberation, Israel aligned itself with Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, who abrogated the federal arrangement and annexed Eritrea. Israeli military advisers trained indigenous Eritreans to fight against their own liberation fronts, the ELF and EPLF. By the mid-1970s, however, Eritrean nationalism prevailed, and many of those forces joined the liberation struggle. In response, Haile Selassie redeployed them into Ethiopia proper, to suppress other resistance movements in Gondar, Welqayit, Ogden, and Harar.
This history explains, though does not justify, why the current Eritrean regime has distanced itself from the Palestinian cause. Despite the support once extended to Eritrean liberation movements by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the regime in Asmara has chosen betrayal over solidarity. At the recent 80th UN General Assembly, Eritrea and Cameroon stood alone among 54 African nations in refusing to recognize the State of Palestine. This is a shameful abandonment of revolutionary principles and a denial of the very values for which Eritreans fought.
ANFET rejects this stance. We affirm that the Eritrean people, in their majority, recognize and support the right of Palestine to statehood. Our solidarity is rooted in shared history, in the universal struggle against oppression, and in the moral duty to stand with those denied freedom.
We call upon the international community to intensify efforts to enforce international law, to end occupation, and to secure for the Palestinian people the justice and sovereignty they deserve.
Standing with Palestine, Standing with the Oppressed!
