NZ ambassador’s Israeli imbroglio

A New Zealand ambassador has been caught in political crossfire between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Jonathan Curr, New Zealand’s new ambassador to Turkey, was scheduled to travel to Israel this week to present his credentials to the Israeli President, Reuven Rivlin.  (Because New Zealand does not have an embassy in Israel, its ambassador to Turkey’s capital, Ankara, acts as a non-resident ambassador to Israel.)

However, Mr Curr was blocked by Israel’s Foreign Ministry because he was also to be accredited to the Palestinian Authority.

According to Israeli newspaper Haaretz, senior officials from Israel ‘s Foreign Ministry insisted an ambassador to Israel could not also be credentialed to Palestine and that this was a long-term position.

Minister of Foreign Affairs Murray McCully has confirmed the impasse.

“A few days ago, Israel advised New Zealand that it would not accept as ambassador a person who was also a representative to the Palestinian Authority,” Mr McCully said.

The issue was apparently a surprise to New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“New Zealand ambassadors based in Ankara have, since 2008, performed both roles and concerns have not been raised until now,” Mr McCully said.

Israeli Foreign Ministry officials have informed Mr Curr this was only because previous New Zealand ambassadors had presented their credentials to the Palestinian Authority without Israel’s knowledge.

Mr McCully denies that was the case, however.

“The dual status of our ambassador as ambassador to Israel and representative to the Palestinian Authority has been public knowledge since 2008,” he says. “Three previous ambassadors have performed both roles.  We have been open about this with the Israeli authorities.”

NBR ONLINE contacted Israel’s embassy in Wellington for a response to Mr McCully’s assertion.

The official NBR spoke to said she was unable to provide a formal response without speaking to the Israel’s ambassador to New Zealand, Yosef Livne.

However, the official – who has worked at Israel’s Wellington embassy for four years – said when she spoke to Mr Livne about it yesterday they had both been unaware of previous New Zealand ambassadors performing both roles.

“There is not one other country in the whole wide world that has accreditations to Israel as well as to the Palestinian Authority. And so what has happened exactly, I need to be briefed on that,” the embassy official said.

According to Haaretz, Israeli officials had suggested to Mr Curr the stand-off could be solved by a junior diplomat being made responsible for New Zealand’s ties with the Palestinian Authority, which reportedly prompted Mr Curr to retort “that Israel was not going to tell his country how to handle its diplomacy.”

Mr McCully has not taken the opportunity to confirm or deny the accuracy of that aspect of the Israeli newspaper’s account, but states that, “We are looking into what arrangements can be made to ensure we have appropriate representation for Israel and the Palestinian Authority.”

In 2012, New Zealand – along with 137 other countries – voted in favour of granting Palestine non-member observer status at the UN.