Penny Wong plans peace mission to Israel, Middle East
Foreign Minister Penny Wong will visit Israel within weeks in the new year as part of a wider Middle East trip to urge regional leaders to chart an end to the war in Gaza.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong will visit Israel within weeks as part of a wider Middle East trip to urge regional leaders to chart an end to the war in Gaza.
Assistant Foreign Minister Tim Watts will lay the groundwork for the trip, announcing on Thursday he would travel to Israel, Qatar and Egypt next week. “Arrangements are being made for the Foreign Minister to visit the Middle East early in the new year,” Senator Wong’s spokeswoman told The Australian. “Australia has been working with countries that have influence in the region to help protect and support civilians, to help prevent the conflict from spreading and to reinforce the need for the just and enduring peace that all of us want.”
Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Simon Birmingham is also due to visit Israel next week, leading a bipartisan delegation that will include the Victorian Labor MPs Josh Burns and Michelle Ananda-Rajah, the LNP’s Andrew Wallace and Victorian Liberal MP Zoe McKenzie.
Senator Wong will seek to meet key counterparts in Israel, the West Bank and countries with influence in the wider region.
It’s understood planning for the trip has been under way for some time, with the government waiting for the early stages of the war to pass before ramping up its on-the-ground engagement.
It follows opposition calls for Anthony Albanese or a senior government minister to visit Israel following Hamas’s October 7 attack on the country that killed more than 1200 people and saw 240 hostages taken.
Mr Watts said in his meetings with Israeli counterparts, he would express “Australia’s unequivocal condemnation of the Hamas terrorist attacks and support for victims and families”.
He said he would also raise the plight of civilians in Gaza, and urge measures to prevent the conflict from escalating.
“In both Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, I will continue Australia’s advocacy for a just and enduring peace through a two-state solution, and discuss the next steps in a political process toward that goal,” Mr Watts said.
“We want to see continued steps towards a sustained ceasefire, but it cannot be one-sided.”
Divisions within Labor over the war disappointed members of Australia’s Jewish community, and delayed a phone call between Mr Albanese and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu following the October 7 attack.
It’s understood Israel has been enthusiastic about Senator Wong’s upcoming trip, and issued an invitation for her to travel there. The Foreign Minister has consistently backed Israel’s right to defend itself, while arguing “the way it does so matters”.
“Israel must respect international humanitarian law and it must conduct its military operations lawfully. And we are very concerned about the scale of civilian death that we are all seeing, including children,” she said earlier this week.
The diplomatic push comes as Israel escalates its assault on Gaza’s southern city of Khan Yunis, where one of the masterminds of the October 7 attack is believed to be hiding. Mr Netanyahu said in a video statement that Israeli forces were closing in on the home of Hamas’s chief in the Gaza Strip, Yahya Sinwar.
The Israeli army on Wednesday said it had struck about 250 targets in Gaza in 24 hours and troops had found an arms depot “in the heart of a civilian population” near a clinic and school in the north of the territory.
Israel declared war on Hamas after the deadliest attack in its history, vowing to eradicate the terrorist group and bring home all its hostages but it is facing a global outcry over the scale of civilian casualties in Gaza, and dire shortages of food, water and fuel.
Hamas said the war had killed more than 16,000 people in the Palestinian enclave, most of them women and children.
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