The South African parliament has voted in favor of a motion to close the Israeli embassy in Pretoria and suspend all diplomatic relations with that country until a ceasefire is agreed in the armed conflict with the radical Islamist organization Hamas, which is backed by the European Union and the United States is classified as terrorist and other countries.
The proposal is clearly symbolic as only President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government has the power to implement this resolution. The motion was put forward by the opposition Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party and passed on Tuesday 21 November. He received the support of 248 parliamentarians, while 91 voted against.
“In the name of our own constitutional values, we must end relations until the human rights of Palestinians are respected and protected,” EFF party leader Julius Malema said last week as he proposed the vote. “Israel must comply with international law and until then any relationship with them must be considered a violation of our constitution,” he added.
The ruling African National Congress (ANC), in turn, pointed to the “atrocities currently being committed in occupied Palestine” to justify its support for the parliamentary motion.
Measure can play against
Ahead of the vote, Corne Mulder of the nationalist Freedom Front (FF+) party warned that the measure could run counter to South African interests. “If the Israeli ambassador is expelled and all diplomatic relations are severed, South Africa will not be able to play any role in terms of mediation, nor will it be able to play a positive and constructive role in ending this conflict to play.” said Mulder.
President Ramaphosa and other senior officials have openly criticized Israel for its military operation against Hamas in the densely populated Gaza Strip.
“The collective punishment suffered by Palestinian civilians as a result of Israel’s illegal use of force is a war crime,” Ramaphosa said on Tuesday at a virtual meeting of the BRICS, the group of largest emerging economies that includes Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. “The deliberate denial of medicine, fuel, food and water to Gazans amounts to genocide,” he added.
The President of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa.Image: Pavel Bednyakov/RIA Novosti/AP/dpa/picture Alliance
Last week, Ramaphosa told reporters during a visit to Qatar that South Africa had “referred the case” to the International Criminal Court (ICC) “because we believe that war crimes are being committed in Gaza.”
The alleged crimes were being committed “in real time,” Ramaphosa said, citing Gaza’s largest health center, Al Shifa Hospital, as an example. Israel claims that Hamas has a command center beneath the site, and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has claimed that its troops found weapons, combat material and technical equipment during a raid on the facilities.
“In the hospital we found weapons, intelligence material, technology and military equipment,” Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told AFP. The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry denied there were weapons in the hospital.
According to figures released on November 21, the death toll in Gaza was over 14,000, according to Hamas authorities.
Pro-Israel organizations against the South African government
Last week, Benji Shulman, public policy director of the South African Zionist Federation, called on the South African government to stop interfering with Israel’s right to self-defense and instead facilitate the release of hostages held by Hamas.
“The South African Zionist Federation maintains that Israel continues to wage its defensive war against the extremist organizations of Hamas, in accordance with international law, against those who murdered women and children, Holocaust survivors, and also took 240 hostages of various nationalities,” Shulman explains.
But political scientist Kwandile Kondlo agreed that the ANC would refer Israel to the International Criminal Court (ICC). “If the ICC cannot act, we have no reason to believe in this institution,” Kondlo said. “This is the time for the ICC to try to be a true institution, an international institution of justice,” he added.
Double standards
Some observers accused South Africa of applying double standards in its responses to the International Criminal Court. When the ICC ordered South Africa to execute an arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin if he attended the BRICS summit in Johannesburg in August, there were contradictory statements from both the government and the ruling ANC party, and there were voices who demanded that South Africa withdraw from the ICC.
Similar arguments were made in 2015 when South Africa did not arrest former Sudanese President Omar al Bashir, who had an ICC arrest warrant, when he attended the African Union summit in Johannesburg.
This article was originally published on November 18, 2023. It has been updated to reflect the latest developments.
(dzc/cp)