{"id":9110,"date":"2026-01-30T09:40:52","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T09:40:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/radiobaayiyobakool.com\/?p=9110"},"modified":"2026-01-31T09:41:55","modified_gmt":"2026-01-31T09:41:55","slug":"israel-expels-south-africas-ambassador-to-palestine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiobaayiyobakool.com\/?p=9110","title":{"rendered":"Israel expels South Africa\u2019s ambassador to Palestine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Friday 30 Jan 2026 {CBB} <\/strong>Israel on Friday declared South Africa\u2019s ambassador to Palestine, Shaun Byneveldt, persona non grata and ordered him to leave Israel within 72 hours, in a tit-for-tat response to Pretoria\u2019s expulsion of Israel\u2019s charge d\u2019affaires.<\/p>\n<p>South Africa\u2019s foreign ministry said Shaun Byneveldt is the country\u2019s ambassador to the State of Palestine but is accredited through Israel, according to a statement.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShaun Byneveldt is ambassador to the State of Palestine not Israel, Israel\u2019s obstructionism forces a farcical arrangement where he is accredited through the very state that occupies his host country.<\/p>\n<p>This underscores Israel\u2019s refusal to honour international consensus on Palestinian statehood,\u201d said South Africa\u2019s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Chrispin Phiri in a post on X social media.<\/p>\n<p>The Israeli Foreign Ministry said the decision to expel the South African diplomat was taken by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Saar.<\/p>\n<p>It cited what it described as \u201cfalse attacks\u201d by South Africa against Israel in international forums and a \u201cunilateral, baseless step\u201d taken against Israel\u2019s charg\u00e9 d\u2019affaires in Pretoria.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSouth Africa\u2019s senior diplomatic representative, \u2026 Shaun Edward Byneveldt, is persona non grata and must leave Israel within 72 hours,\u201d the ministry said in a statement, adding that \u201cadditional steps will be considered in due course.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Israel envoy expelled<\/p>\n<p>Earlier Friday, South Africa\u2019s Department of International Relations and Cooperation announced that Israel\u2019s acting ambassador, Ariel Seidman, had been declared persona non grata over \u201ca series of unacceptable violations of diplomatic norms and practice which pose a direct challenge to South Africa\u2019s sovereignty,\u201d including remarks deemed insulting to President Cyril Ramaphosa.<\/p>\n<p>Pretoria also gave Seidman 72 hours to leave the country.<\/p>\n<p>Seidman has served as Israel\u2019s charge d\u2019affaires since November 2023, when Israel recalled its ambassador after South Africa withdrew its diplomats from Tel Aviv over Israel\u2019s genocidal war in Gaza.<\/p>\n<p>South Africa, which maintains relations with both Israel and Palestine, filed a case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in December 2023, accusing it of violating its obligations under the Genocide Convention in its actions against Palestinians in Gaza.<\/p>\n<p>Since then, the court has issued a series of provisional measures ordering Israel to take steps to prevent acts of genocide.<\/p>\n<p>More than 71,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed and over 171,000 others injured in the Israeli war since October 2023.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Friday 30 Jan 2026 {CBB} Israel on Friday declared South Africa\u2019s ambassador to Palestine, Shaun Byneveldt, persona non grata and ordered him to leave Israel within 72 hours, in a tit-for-tat response to Pretoria\u2019s expulsion of Israel\u2019s charge d\u2019affaires. South Africa\u2019s foreign ministry said Shaun Byneveldt is the country\u2019s ambassador to the State of Palestine [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":9111,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiobaayiyobakool.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiobaayiyobakool.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiobaayiyobakool.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiobaayiyobakool.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiobaayiyobakool.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9110"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiobaayiyobakool.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9112,"href":"https:\/\/radiobaayiyobakool.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9110\/revisions\/9112"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiobaayiyobakool.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiobaayiyobakool.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiobaayiyobakool.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiobaayiyobakool.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}