Despite parliament voting to shut down the Israeli embassy nearly two years ago, Deputy President Paul Mashatile says the move has not yet been implemented because South Africa still wants to maintain a presence in the region.
Mashatile was speaking during an interview on a new podcast, IN THE KNOW with Sowetan.
“The government has considered that fact. It's not that we didn't want to do it but when we implement these decisions, sometimes they go in phases.
“You have to start with a particular action to see how far it takes you. I know some people wanted us to act there and there but it is not something we are ruling out,” he said.
In 2023, MPs voted in favour of closing down the Israeli embassy due to its attacks in Gaza. The same year, thousands of protesters marched and called on President Cyril Ramaphosa to shut down the embassy.
South Africa took Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), accusing Israel of genocide against Palestinians.
“One of the challenges we had, we wanted to have a presence in that region and we decided that if we close their embassy, they will close ours and that locks us out of a region where we want to have a presence to be able to engage,” Mashatile said.
“Some people might say you don't have to be there physically but we felt let's leave room for now to be able to engage because that region is important for us.
“We want to see the people of Palestine having their independence. We have been supporting them and that is why we went to the ICJ.”
Mashatile said the government was not ignoring parliament but had to consider what it needed to do to put pressure on Israel.
“We continue to do that [put pressure on Israel]. Even in Russia [where Mashatile went on a working visit this month], this is a matter we were discussing with other leaders — Indonesia, China who were with us there — to say how do we manage this situation.
“President [Vladimir] Putin in particular was accused of abandoning Iran and people were saying, 'Iran are your friends, are you not helping them?' and he was saying 'I am engaging them' ... there is a particular way that sometimes leaders turned to do things, so one could have expected that maybe because Russia is a friend of Iran they are going to run in there to try to be on the side of Iran but they tried a different approach of engaging both sides to say there can be peaceful resolution of this problem.”
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