New Zealand–Israel relations
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Israel–New Zealand relations are the foreign relations between Israel and New Zealand.
New Zealand has a long history of support for Israel, and voted in favour of the 1947 UN partition resolution, which led to the creation of the State of Israel, despite heavy pressure from the United Kingdom on all Commonwealth nations to abstain on the resolution. New Zealand recognised the State of Israel in January 1949.
New Zealand has an honorary consulate in Tel Aviv and Israel has an embassy in Wellington with an honorary consulate in Auckland.
New Zealand was accredited to Israel from The Hague in 1986. The accreditation was moved to Ankara, Turkey in February 1996. The New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE) regional office in Dubai and the NZTE office in Ankara, cover Israel. Gad Propper was appointed New Zealand's Honorary Consul to Israel in June 1998.
NZ Foreign Minister Phil Goff visited Israel in May 2003. New Zealand’s Minister for Research, Science and Technology, Pete Hodgson, visited in November–December 2000. A delegation of four senior Israeli Foreign Ministry officials traveled to New Zealand for the inaugural New Zealand-Israel Foreign Ministry Consultations in September 2003. A Knesset delegation visited New Zealand in August 2001.
The Israeli embassy in Wellington closed in October 2002 due to financial reasons, but reopened in 2010 with Shemi Tzur appointed as the Ambassador to New Zealand. In June 2013 he was replaced by Ambassador Yosef Livne.
In 2015 Israel and New Zealand settled a diplomatic dispute that arose when New Zealand assigned an ambassador to Israel who was also slated to be the ambassador to the Palestinians. In September 2014 Israel would not allow Ambassador Jonathan Curr to present his credentials, saying that violated Israel's "well-known policy" of not receiving diplomats who are also received by the Palestinian Authority. New Zealand ended the conflict by appointing separate diplomats to Israel and the Palestinian authority, a move viewed as motivated by its election as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and its increasing impatience with the council's failure to agree on a UN stance in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
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