Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, a minister in the president's office, told a press briefing that all diplomatic staff in Tel Aviv would be asked back to Pretoria for consultations, without providing further details.
"We are... extremely concerned at the continued killing of children and innocent civilians in the Palestinian territories and we believe the nature of response by Israel has become one of collective punishment," Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor told a later press conference.
"We felt it important that we do signal the concern of South Africa while continuing to call for a comprehensive cessation (of hostilities)."
The Zionist Israeli regime launched an aggression on the Gaza Strip in Palestine on October 7 following the Hamas-led attack on southern the Occupied Lands known as the Al-Aqsa Storm Operation during which it killed more than 1,400 Zionist regime soldiers and armed settlers and took more than 200 of them to the besieged enclave as prisoners of war.
The death toll continues to mount in the Gaza Strip, which has been reeling from a month of relentless Israeli attacks and a tightened siege.
Nearly 9,800 Palestinians, most of them women and children have been killed in 30 days of Israeli attacks on Gaza.
SD/PR
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