Israel–South Africa relations refer to the current and historic relationship between the Republic of South Africa and the State of Israel. As of January 2024, South Africa maintains only "limited political and diplomatic interaction" with Israel due to the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
In 1947, South Africa voted in favor of the UN Partition Plan to create Israel. During the 1950s and 1960s, Israel criticized the racial policies of South Africa. But from 1967 onwards, Israel deepened relations with the apartheid South African regime, and maintained diplomatic relations with the "Bantustans". Israel and South Africa also had a military alliance, including collaboration on nuclear weapons. Up to 1986, Israel also had a vibrant economic relationship but was forced to sanction South Africa in 1987 as a consequence of American pressure.
Relations began to deteriorate after apartheid ended in 1994. Nelson Mandela visited Israel, but was critical of its treatment of Palestinians. In 2019, South Africa downgraded relations with Israel in response to its killing of Gazan protestors. In 2023, during the Gaza war, South Africa sued Israel at the International Court of Justice, accusing Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in violation of the Genocide Convention. Israel currently maintains an embassy in Pretoria and a trade office in Johannesburg, while South Africa has an embassy in Tel Aviv.
Early relations (up to 1967)
1948–1949: South African recognition of Israel
The Union of South Africa was among the thirty-three states that voted in favour of the 1947 United Nations (UN) Partition Plan, which endorsed the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. On 24 May 1948, nine days after Israel's declaration of independence, the South African government of Field Marshal Jan Smuts became the seventh foreign government to grant de facto recognition to the State of Israel. Two days later, Smuts – a long-time supporter of Zionism and a personal friend of Chaim Weizmann – was voted out in elections; the new South African government was formed by D.F. Malan's National Party (NP), which had run on a platform of legislating apartheid. This result was of interest to Israel primarily because of the presence in South Africa of a large Jewish population: by 1949, there were 120,000 Jews living in South Africa, the overwhelming majority of whom were Zionists, and many of whom had provided important financial support to the Zionist movement in the decades after the Balfour Declaration. After its election to government, the NP apparently overcame its earlier tendency towards "virulent anti-Semitism". The South African government granted de jure recognition to Israel on 14 May 1949. Formal diplomatic relations between the countries began in the same year, with the opening of Israel's consulate-general in Pretoria, later – in November 1950 – raised to the status of a legation. However, South Africa had no direct diplomatic representation in Israel, and was represented by the United Kingdom instead, until it sent a consul-general to Tel Aviv in 1972.
In addition to granting Israel diplomatic recognition, Malan permitted Jewish volunteer reserves to serve in Israel, and relaxed South Africa's rigid currency regulations to permit the export of commodities and foreign exchange to Israel. Indeed, in late 1948, Malan and his Minister of Defence had approved – and the South African Customs Department provided logistical assistance for – a $1.2 million shipment of goods to Israel, sponsored by the South African Zionist Federation. In 1951, Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett visited South Africa; and in 1953, Malan visited Israel personally, becoming the first Commonwealth prime minister to do so. Once elected in 1958, Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd assured Jewish South Africans that he would continue the friendly policies inaugurated by his predecessors, Malan and J.G. Strijdom. For this and for "helping Israel to attain its present status", he was publicly thanked by a visiting member of the Knesset, Mordechai Nurok, in 1959. Annual flows of funds to Israel from South Africa were estimated at $700,000 by that time, and in all it was estimated that South African Jews sent more than $19.6 million to Israel between 1951 and 1961.
1950s–1960s: Israeli renunciation of apartheid However, this ostensibly auspicious start to relations was complicated by Israel's stance in the increasingly vociferous UN General Assembly debates over South African apartheid. This had begun in the very week of Israel's accession to the UN in May 1949, when it had supported a motion requiring South Africa to enter into roundtable discussions with Pakistan and India over apartheid and its implications for Indian and Pakistani citizens. In December 1950, diplomat Michael Comay wrote in an internal memo that the Israeli strategy in such votes was to generally refrain from condemnation of South Africa, and from passing any judgment on the specific merits of the issues... On the other hand, we can and should refrain from any express or implied support for the South African caste system.
In a letter in December, Comay summarised this position as responding to the need to "find a compromise between our principles and convictions on matters of racialism, and our desire to maintain friendship with South Africa". According to legal historian Rotem Giladi, during the 1950s this manifested in frequent "equivocation" on apartheid by the Israeli mission to the UN – though Giladi also argues that Israel's speeches and votes on apartheid were nonetheless "considerably more progressive" than those of many Western states. And, during the 1960s, Israel became increasingly consistent in its criticism of the South African government: it frequently voted against South Africa and apartheid at the UN.
In October 1961, Israel voted at the UN to censure a speech made in virulent defence of apartheid by Eric Louw, the South African Foreign Minister. Israel and the Netherlands were the only two Western states to support the censure. South African prime minister and architect of South Africa's apartheid policies, Hendrik Verwoerd, dismissed an Israeli vote against South African apartheid at the United Nations, saying, "Israel is not consistent in its new anti-apartheid attitude... they took Israel away from the Arabs after the Arabs lived there for a thousand years. In that, I agree with them. Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state."The Empire's New Walls: Sovereignty, Neo-liberalism, and the Production of Space in Post-apartheid South Africa and Post-Oslo Palestine/Israel. Andrew James Clarno. 2009. p. 66–67 His successor John Vorster also maintained the same view.Quigley 1990 p.149:'Former South African prime minister John Vorster viewed Israel’s government as confronting a situation similar to South Africa’s. Israel was faced with an “apartheid problem” as concerned its Arab inhabitants, he said. “We view Israel’s position and problems with understanding and sympathy’.'
In October 1962 at the UN General Assembly, Israel voted in favour of the landmark Resolution 1761, which strongly condemned apartheid and called for voluntary sanctions against South Africa. Members of the Israeli legislature, the Knesset, approved the measure in a 63–11 vote. The following year, Israel announced that it had withdrawn its envoy to South Africa, thus unilaterally reducing the status of its diplomatic representation, with its South African legation henceforth headed by a chargé d'affaires. It also announced that it was taking steps to enforce an embargo against the South African military, as called for by Resolution 1761. In October 1967, Israel was among the large majority of UN member states which voted in favour of a resolution terminating South Africa's mandate over South West Africa.
In the 1960s, senior Israeli politicians frequently framed diplomatic opposition to apartheid as a matter of principle: in October 1963, Golda Meir, then Israel's Foreign Minister, told the UN General Assembly that Israel's "deep abhorrence for all forms of discrimination on the grounds of race, colour or religion... stems from our age-old spiritual values, and from our long and tragic historical experience as a victim". Israel also had strategic reasons to distance itself from South Africa: as a counterbalance to the hostility of the Arab and Soviet blocs, it increasingly sought closer ties with Sub-Saharan African states, which were gaining their political independence during that time and which strongly opposed the apartheid policy and South Africa's regional hegemony. These moral and strategic considerations had to be balanced against the concerns of South African Jews: the influential South African Jewish Board of Deputies feared an anti-Semitic backlash if Israel alienated the South African government, and, indeed, it passed a resolution declaring that "Israel should have joined the other western nations in abstaining from voting against South Africa" on Resolution 1761.
No matter Israel's motivations, the South African government highly resented its stance at the UN. Louw accused the Israeli government of "hostility and ingratitude... in view of the fact that the South African government and individual members of the Cabinet have in the past gone out of their way to foster good relations with Israel", and Verwoerd argued publicly that "Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state". As a retaliatory measure, the concessions previously granted on foreign exchange flows to Israel were terminated. By 1967, diplomatic contact between Israel and South Africa was minimal, though not entirely non-existent. However, as academic Richard P. Stevens observes, "while recriminations increased on the international level so did the volume of trade between the two countries." Although Israel had begun to implement a military embargo, it had not severed commercial, maritime, and air links with South Africa, as encouraged in Resolution 1761. In 1967, Israeli exports to South Africa amounted to $4million (more than double the figure for 1961), while South African exports to Israel were $3.3million. This would indicate that, Israel's diplomatic emphasis on Sub-Saharan Africa notwithstanding – and despite this representing only a small fraction of each country's total trade – South Africa had become Israel's largest trading partner in Africa.
1967–1994 1967-73: Israel alianated from Africa