JNS
The country’s leaders cancel visa-free entry for Gazans to make a political point about Israel, once again revealing their real priorities.
South Africa’s government has found a new way to strike a blow at Israel by making life harder for Palestinians.
On Dec. 6, Pretoria canceled the 90-day visa exemption for holders of Palestinian Authority passports. The Department of Home Affairs said the waiver was being withdrawn after what it called “deliberate and ongoing abuse” of the exemption by “Israeli actors linked to ‘voluntary emigration’ efforts for residents of the Gaza Strip.”
South Africa is accusing unnamed “Israeli actors” of trying to empty Gaza by sending Palestinians to Johannesburg. Its response is not to go after these supposed actors, but to shut its doors to Palestinians who might want to visit, study or seek refuge there.
Under the now-scrapped exemption, charter flights brought a number of Palestinians from Gaza to South Africa. Two flights in late October and mid-November carried about 300 people to Johannesburg’s OR Tambo Airport. The second group—153 men, women and children—was left on the tarmac for hours before a local humanitarian group intervened.
We now know something about how those flights came about. Reports indicate that families paid around $2,000 per ticket to a group believed to be called Al-Majd Europe, which arranged for them to exit Gaza via Israel and continue on to Johannesburg. Israel’s role, according to media accounts, was to permit Palestinians who already had third-country approval to leave—hardly the behavior of a country intent on keeping all Gazans trapped. Even the Palestinian embassy in Pretoria has complained that the passengers were exploited by an unregistered organization that took money from desperate families.
What we are really looking at is a murky mix of middlemen and charter brokers, not evidence of an official Israeli deportation program.
None of that has stopped South African officials from turning the episode into another indictment of Israel. Justice Minister Ronald Lamola has portrayed the flights as part of a “broader agenda to remove Palestinians from Palestine.” Now the Home Affairs ministry has gone further, scrapping visa-free entry for all Palestinian passport holders.
Who is actually punished by this move? Not Al-Majd Europe. Not the charter brokers. Not any “Israeli actors” South Africa claims to be so concerned about. The people hurt are ordinary Palestinians who might have relatives in South Africa, and who might want to study, seek medical treatment or rebuild their lives after war. For them, a relatively accessible path has just been closed.
If Pretoria truly believes there was “systematic abuse” of its immigration rules, then it has normal tools available: Investigate the intermediaries, prosecute fraudulent operators and demand transparency from any organizations arranging these trips. It could even cooperate with other states to uncover who is profiteering from Gaza’s misery. Instead, the government chose the one step that looks tough on Israel, even as it is harshest on Palestinians: End the visa waiver and issue a press release blaming “Israeli actors.”
This fits South Africa’s wider approach.
For months, Pretoria has led legal campaigns against Israel, including the “genocide” case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, while saying very little about Hamas’s use of human shields or its continued rule over the Gaza Strip. When hundreds of Gazans take the drastic step of leaving Hamas-controlled territory, South Africa’s leaders portray them not as people fleeing war and dictatorship, but as pawns in an Israeli scheme. Palestinians are treated as a faceless collective, useful as symbols in the struggle against Israel but not as individuals with agency. Their right to seek a different life and to get their children out of a war zone is subordinated to the need to preserve a narrative of permanent victimhood.
No one says Ukrainian or Syrian refugees are part of a plot to empty their countries. Only when the refugees are Palestinian—and Israel is in any way involved—does relocation become suspect.
Contrary to the “from the river to the sea” slogans, many Gazans are quietly voting with their feet. They are willing to leave the coastal enclave that is still basically run by terrorists for the possibility of a normal life in South Africa, Europe or elsewhere. Their testimonies are heartbreaking: a cancer patient seeking treatment after losing children to the war, parents describing relentless bombardment and hardship. No one should have to make such choices. But once they are made, the moral question for the international community is straightforward: Will you help such people, or will you send them back to preserve a political script?
A genuinely pro-Palestinian policy would look very different. It would crack down on those who exploit Palestinians, instead of punishing their would-be hosts; provide legal pathways for those who wish to leave Gaza; and support, rather than obstruct, countries that are willing to take them in. In these ways, it would recognize that cooperating with Israel to move civilians out of a war zone is not “ethnic cleansing” but common sense. It would treat Palestinians as human beings, not as props in someone else’s courtroom drama.
South Africa likes to present itself as the moral conscience of the world on Israel. But when its leaders cancel visa-free entry for Palestinian Arabs to make a political point about Israel, they reveal their real priorities. And Palestinians are the ones who pay the price.
