From the US Army website:
African Lion 2023 is U.S. Africa Command's largest, premier, joint, annual exercise hosted by Morocco, Djibouti, Ghana, Senegal and Tunisia, between May 15 and July 18, 2023. More than 10,000 participants from 20 nations and NATO train together with a focus on enhancing readiness for U.S. and partner nation forces. AL23 is a joint all-domain, multi-component, and multinational exercise, employing a full array of mission capabilities with the goal to strengthen interoperability among participants and set the theater for strategic access.
In last year's exercises, Israel sent two "observers" who appear to have participated fully. Possibly the lack of outrage in Arab media last year was because they were characterized as mere observers.
However, Arab media is reporting that Israel's participation is planned to be much more extensive this year - which puts Tunisia into a bind.
Tunisia is proud to be one of the main partners with the US in these exercises, but it is facing domestic pressure to quit this year because that would indicate "normalization" with Israel. Tunisia's Republican Party called on the government to withdraw from the exercises.
The decision by Tunisia is especially interesting since the President of Tunisia, Kais Saied, has described normalization with Israel as "high treason."
It will be interesting to see how they try to walk the line this year.
