Africa-Press. The United States condemned South Africa’s decision to expel the Israeli chargé d’affaires last week, with a spokesperson for the US State Department describing the move as prioritizing a “politics of grievance.”
Tommy Pigott, Deputy Spokesperson for the US State Department, said on the X platform that “expelling a diplomat for criticizing the African National Congress’s ties with the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and other antisemitic fundamentalist groups prioritizes grievance politics over the interests of South Africa and its citizens.”
Last Friday, the South African government announced that Ariel Sideman, chargé d’affaires at Israel’s embassy in Pretoria, had been declared “persona non grata” and ordered to leave the country within 72 hours.
South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation said in a statement that the decision followed “a series of unacceptable violations of diplomatic norms and practices,” which it described as a direct challenge to South Africa’s national sovereignty.
The ministry explained that these violations included the repeated use of Israel’s official social media platforms to launch offensive attacks against South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, as well as the deliberate failure to inform authorities about potential visits by senior Israeli officials.
The statement described these actions as “a serious abuse of diplomatic privileges and a fundamental breach of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations,” stressing that they had undermined trust and essential protocols governing bilateral relations between the two countries.
Israel responded swiftly the same day, announcing that South Africa’s senior diplomatic representative in Tel Aviv, Minister Shaun Edward Beinfieldt, had been declared “persona non grata” and ordered to leave within 72 hours, describing South Africa’s move as “a malicious attack on Israel on the international stage.”
This step represents the culmination of ongoing tensions between the two sides, particularly in the aftermath of Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip and South Africa’s legal and political positions toward Israeli policies.
It is worth noting that on December 29, 2023, South Africa filed a lawsuit against Israel before the International Court of Justice in The Hague, accusing it of violating the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention of Genocide.
