Israel is refusing to allow New Zealand's new foreign minister to present his credentials to President Reuven Rivlin since he also planned to present them to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas,
Haaretz reports.
Jonathan Curr, New Zealand's new ambassador to Turkey, was scheduled to visit Israel this week. He has canceled those plans after Israel objected to him presenting his credentials to the P.A.
New Zealand does not have an embassy in Israel. It handles relations with several countries in the Middle East through its Ankara embassy.
It also does not formally recognize a state of Palestine, so the plan to present credentials to it were merely a diplomatic formality.
When Israel's Foreign Ministry heard of the plans to meet with Abbas, it told Curr he had violated diplomatic protocol. The Oslo Accords forbid a foreign ambassador to be credentialed in both Israel and the P.A.
Curr said that the two previous ambassadors had done so without protest from Israel, but Israel countered that if that was true, they had not informed Israel of the move.
Israel suggested that a lower level diplomat could offer a letter of introduction to the P.A. and deal with relations, but Curr said his country would not be told how to run its diplomacy.
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