It all stems back to the dark days of apartheid. Israel, aware of its obligations to the large Jewish community living in South Africa, maintained diplomatic, military and trade relations with the government – even though it did condemn the regime’s apartheid policies, and applied trade and cultural sanctions from 1987 until apartheid ended. The African National Congress (ANC), fighting tooth and nail to eliminate apartheid, perceived Israel as less than a whole-hearted friend, and embraced the Palestinian cause.

On Nelson Mandela’s release from prison in 1990, one of the first leaders he met with was his close friend and confidante, PLO leader Yasser Arafat. When he visited Israel in 1999, he was very supportive of the Palestinian cause.

Efforts by Israel to repair relations, especially after the election of the ANC government in 1994, had little or no effect, although bilateral trade remained healthy for many years. In 2012 bilateral trade peaked at $1.19 billion, but as ANC anti-Israel policy began to harden, trade began to decline. In 2015, then-ANC leader and president of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, hosted a Hamas delegation including Khaled Mashaal. By 2019, when South Africa downgraded its embassy in Tel Aviv to a liaison office, bilateral trade amounted to only $407.7 million. In 2023 it fell to about $350 million.

The ANC ruled South Africa for thirty years until, in the general election of May 2024, the party lost its majority. As part of the deal which stitched together a governing coalition, President Cyril Ramaphosa, who has repeatedly labeled Israel an apartheid state (he has never visited the country), was re-elected. Since then the ANC-led coalition........

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