South Africa has ordered Israel’s top diplomat to the country to leave within 72 hours, citing “insulting attacks” on South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa on social media and the “abuse of diplomatic privilege”.

Ariel Seidman, the chargé d’affaires at Israel’s embassy in Pretoria, was declared persona non grata by South Africa’s Department for International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) in a statement on its website on Friday afternoon, the Guardian reported. 

“This decisive measure follows a series of unacceptable violations of diplomatic norms and practice which pose a direct challenge to South Africa’s sovereignty”, the statement said.

“These violations include the repeated use of official Israeli social media platforms to launch insulting attacks against His Excellency President Cyril Ramaphosa, and a deliberate failure to inform DIRCO of purported visits by senior Israeli officials.”

South Africa’s relationship with Israel deteriorated in December 2023, when South Africa launched a case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) accusing Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

In January 2024, the ICJ ruled that the claim of genocide was “plausible”. However, the case has since slowed and experts do not expect a judgment before the end of 2027. Israel has rejected accusations of genocide as “outrageous and false”.

South Africa and Israel have long been at odds, due to the staunch support of the Palestinian cause by South Africa’s government. Soon after his release from prison in 1990, Nelson Mandela embraced the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. In 1997, Mandela, by then president of South Africa, said: “Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”

Many South Africans see strong similarities between apartheid white minority rule and Israel’s grip over the occupied Palestinian territories.