In late September, South Africa granted rights for fossil fuel extraction to Navitas, an Israeli company. Navitas has been granted 37.5% of the Eco-Atlantic exploration block in the Orange Basin. Eco-Atlantic, a Canadian-registered company, is itself owned by Gil Holzman, an Israeli businessman. The exploration block is nearly 20 thousand square kilometres large and, as Eco-Atlantic Oil’s celebratory statement notes, it ‘benefits from three legacy exploration wells’ and the promise of profitable offshore oil and gas extraction, supposedly to meet South Africa’s increasing energy demand.
The deal was approved despite our government’s climate commitments, despite a South African Constitutional Court ruling a month prior against a similar extractive deal on the Wild Coast (Eastern Cape), and despite international legal commitments to boycott companies complicit in Israel’s genocide and continued colonial presence and expansion, as per a UN resolution adopted two years ago. In granting approval, the South African government made no room for public participation, refused to consider the social, cultural and environmental harms of the offshore oil exploration and potential extraction in the affected area, and blatantly disregarded calls from social and climate justice organisations warning against the deal.
South Africa’s foreign policy and commitments against Israel’s apartheid and brutal oppression, as well as its stance in holding Israel accountable for genocide at the International Court of Justice, are starkly contradicted by its trade policy. Despite South Africa’s internationally acclaimed legal challenge to the genocide perpetrated by Israel, in 2025 we became Israel’s largest coal supplier in the world. While the majority of South Africans struggle to get by with soaring energy costs caused by Israel’s massacres and wars, foreign companies like Navitas are allowed to profit from selling the country’s fossil fuels back to South African energy providers and users. While claiming to stand up for the Palestinian people’s right to life, dignity and self-determination, our government’s coal exports actively contribute to their genocide by powering Israel’s ruthless and illegal regime. A case of blatant moral hypocrisy, our government’s actions also fail to meet its obligations under international law.
While poor people in South Africa pay the price of climate change caused by capitalism and colonialism, through climate-related disasters, severe drought conditions, malnourishment and ecocide, fossil fuel extraction by Navitas only serves to profit the Zionist regime and deepen the climate crisis back home. Here, Israel’s seizure of natural resources was signed through closed-door deals between private companies and agreed to by an incumbent minister, never shy to express his commitment to fossil fuel extraction. In Gaza, Israel seized offshore oil in Palestinian territory through accumulation by genocide. The waters must not be muddied by the false dream of “job creation and economic growth” through foreign investment. Extractive capitalism profiting genocidal Israel cannot be whitewashed by claims of a just transition.
As South African Jews, we add our voice to the loud and clear opposition to this further link with Israel and our government’s complicity in genocide. Instead of uplifting South Africans, collaborations like this one make South Africa’s progress beholden to Zionism. We firmly stand by Nelson Mandela’s astute observation that ‘our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinian people’.
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