The Tel Aviv Heat, founded in 2021, is Israel’s first professional rugby team. In March, it was going to travel to South Africa to compete in a tournament, 2023 Mzansi Challenge, against teams from across the African continent.

But, reports Shiryn Ghermezian, the South African Rugby Union (SARU) has disinvited the team. The reason, unsurprisingly, is South Africa’s tradition of vociferous support for BDS.

The announcement was made the same day that the South African BDS Coalition released a statement expressing outrage and calling the rugby union’s invitation to Tel Avi Heat “embarrassing” and an “overtly racist move.” The anti-Israel group also said “if this apartheid Israeli team comes to play in South Africa, SARU will have blood on its hands.” The BDS Coalition then celebrated a victory after the SARU made its decision to disinvite the Israel team and said “kick apartheid Israel out of all sports now.”

On March 5, Riyadh appointed Salman al-Dosari—a prominent journalist and vocal supporter of the Abraham Accords—as its new minister of information. Hussain Abdul-Hussain takes this choice as one of several signals that Saudi Arabia is inching closer to normalization with Israel:

Saudi Arabia has been the biggest supporter of Palestinians since before the establishment of Israel in 1948. When the kingdom’s founder Abdulaziz Ibn Saud met with the U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt aboard the USS Quincy in the Red Sea in 1945, the Saudi king demanded that Jews in Palestine be settled elsewhere. But unlimited Saudi support has only bought Palestinian ungratefulness and at times, downright hate. After the Abraham Accords were announced in August 2020, Palestinians in Gaza and Ramallah burned pictures not only of the leaders of the UAE and Bahrain but also of Saudi Arabia’s King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS).

Since then, many Palestinian pundits and activists have been accusing Saudi Arabia of betraying the cause, even though the Saudis have said repeatedly, and as late as January, that their peace with Israel is incumbent on the establishment of a Palestinian state.

While the Saudi Arabian government has practiced self-restraint by not reciprocating Palestinian hate, Saudi Arabian columnists, cartoonists, and social-media activists have been punching back. After the burning of the pictures of Saudi Arabian leaders, al-Dosari wrote that with their aggression against Saudi Arabia, the Palestinians “have liberated the kingdom from any ethical or political commitment to these parties in the future.”