Johannesburg, South Africa – The South African Zionist Federation (SAZF) welcomes United States President Donald Trump’s comprehensive and enforceable proposal as the most serious effort yet to bring the war in Gaza towards a decisive end, not through empty slogans but through hard conditions that achieve Israel’s legitimate aims of dismantling Hamas and securing the release of hostages.
This plan is not rhetoric. It sets clear deadlines and deliverables: all hostages are to be returned within 72 hours of acceptance; Hamas must dismantle its tunnels and rocket arsenal; and an international stabilisation force, with the backing of Arab states and global powers, will oversee demilitarisation and security in Gaza. Reconstruction will be conditional on Hamas permanently placing its weapons “beyond use” and the establishment of a transitional governing authority, ensuring that Hamas never again rules Gaza as an armed terrorist entity.
The international support has been unprecedented. From Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates to France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and even Russia, governments have endorsed the plan as a serious framework. This is not a U.S.- Israel effort alone; it is a broad coalition that places responsibility squarely on Hamas: either it complies, or it faces, in President Trump’s words, “a very sad end.”
And yet, South Africa’s ANC government has been utterly excluded from this global consensus. After months of grandstanding, inflammatory rhetoric, and marching in protests that include banners declaring “we are all Hamas,” it is no surprise that Pretoria was not invited to the table, not consulted, and not respected. The ANC’s theatrics have achieved nothing – not for Palestinians, not for Israelis, and not for South Africans. While the nations of the world coalesce around a concrete path to end the war, the ANC offers only silence and empty slogans.
This exclusion is an embarrassment. It exposes the ANC’s irrelevance, its growing isolation on the international stage, and its betrayal of the South African people who expect leaders to contribute constructively, not align with terror.
The SAZF stands proudly with Israel, with the families of the hostages still suffering in Gaza, and with the broad international coalition that has embraced this breakthrough plan. We call on Hamas to accept this deal unconditionally. It is not those who support Israel who are isolated; it is the ANC, alone in its moral theatre, cut off from diplomacy, and on the wrong side of history.
