Flag carrier El Al said Friday it is planning to cancel its Tel Aviv to Johannesburg route from April 1, given a drop in demand since war erupted between Israel and the Hamas terror group in the Gaza Strip
El Al also said the decision was related to South Africa’s claim that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza, a charge that Jerusalem vehemently denies.
The cancelation of the bi-weekly flight will mean that there are no direct flights from Israel to South Africa and is a further blow to the rapidly deteriorating ties between the two countries.
El Al said it will shift the widebody aircraft it uses on the route to expand current destinations while examining new routes.
Air travel to and from Israel plunged with the outbreak of the war on October 7, when some 3,000 terrorists burst across the border into Israel from Gaza by land, air and sea, killing some 1,200 people and seizing over 240 hostages. The vast majority of those killed as gunmen seized border communities were civilians, many amid horrific acts of brutality by the terrorists.
Vowing to destroy the terror group, Israel launched a wide-scale military campaign in Gaza, which the Hamas-run health ministry says has killed over 25,000 people so far. These figures cannot be independently verified, and are believed to include both civilians and Hamas members killed in Gaza, including as a consequence of the terror groups’ own rocket misfires.
Israel has rejected South Africa’s accusations of genocide as baseless and claims Pretoria is acting as an emissary of Hamas, which seeks to eliminate the Jewish state. It says the Israel Defense Forces targets Hamas terrorists — not Palestinian civilians — but that civilian casualties in the fighting are unavoidable as terrorists operate from within the population.
Dozens of flights to and from Tel Aviv were canceled by major airlines in the wake of the October 7 attacks, though many resumed in December and January as rocket attacks from Gaza on the center of Israel diminished.
El Al also paused flying over Oman on its flights to southeast Asia in October and asked officials in Muscat to approve a new route over the country, presumably one that passes farther away from neighboring Iran.
Israel recalled its Ambassador to South Africa Eli Belotserkovsky for consultations in November, a month after war broke out, following a series of highly antagonistic comments and steps by the government in Pretoria over Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
South Africa had already recalled its own ambassador and diplomatic staff from Israel in the wake of the war and said it was considering shutting down the Israeli embassy in Pretoria entirely.
Pretoria has long been an ardent supporter of the Palestinians, and the ANC has sought to link its struggle against the apartheid regime in South Africa to the demands of the Palestinians for an independent state.