Fran O'Sullivan: Israel visit prickly issue for Key

John Key. Photo / Mark Mitchell

John Key's political antennae will be acutely heightened as he weighs whether he should make a formal visit to Israel in this parliamentary term after that nation's decision to use lethal force on peace activists in international waters.

An official visit has been on the cards ever since Key won the prime ministership.

But after this week's tumultuous events, Key will want to ensure that any visit to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's increasingly hardline state does not cast him in the role of personally endorsing strategies that are leading many in the Western world to increasingly view Israel as an international pariah.

Local Jewish community leaders have been courting Key to visit Israel in his official capacity as leader of New Zealand.

They know that Key's own heritage (his Jewish mother Ruth Lazar escaped Nazi Germany as a schoolgirl to live in Britain) inevitably means he will feel an emotional connection when he finally does get to visit Israel's capital, Jerusalem.

The community has strong hopes that Key will gain a greater understanding of Israel's stance on the Palestinian issue. But there are also hopes that the two small democracies can fashion stronger trading and investment links.

Israel certainly has a lot to offer. Its high-tech industries are among the world's best. It is a leader in the venture capital sector. It also wants to forge scientific links in the agriculture space.

In his previous role as finance minister, Netanyahu, known as "Bibi", turned Israel's economy around with the same ruthless efficiency he once employed as leader of Israel's anti-terror unit.

The firebrand politician credited New Zealand's former Finance Minister Sir Roger Douglas as his inspiration. "Sir Roger has bold ideas. He really gets ... to the core of it," he told me in an interview in 2004.

But the political environment is much more tricky now.

A few weeks ago, former Israeli ambassador Nissan Krupsky came to Wellington to check out the atmospherics around the potential for a Key visit. Krupsky was popular during his own ambassadorship here.

A thoroughly decent man, he was also an important back-channel between Wellington and Jerusalem during the lengthy diplomatic stand-off over the Mossad passports scandal.

Helen Clark's Government reacted in robust fashion when police foiled the attempt by Israeli agents to obtain New Zealand passports by forging the identities of Kiwis.

But it took pains-staking diplomacy to pave the way for the warming of relations between the two countries after Israel infringed New Zealand's sovereignty.

It is fair to say the relations between Clark's Government and the Israeli Government were never the same.

But the Key Government has deliberately taken a less reactive approach to Israel.

Foreign Minister Murray McCully announced from Jerusalem in March that young Kiwis and Israelis would be able to take advantage of working holiday programmes. And the relationship was formalised when Israel opened its new embassy in Wellington a week ago.

But that was then. This week McCully called in Israeli Ambassador Shemi Tzur to convey the New Zealand Government's concern and support for an international investigation into the Israeli forces' actions on the aid ship.

It was a relatively anodyne meeting. McCully made no accusations. And the Israeli Embassy said it was regrettable lives were lost.

But, frankly, there is a bigger game at stake here. Kiwis have strong sympathies for the underdog.

In the 1950s and 1960s many young New Zealanders had Israeli pen-friends. Some of the more idealistic - like Labour's leader Phil Goff - trekked off to work on a kibbutz.

But these days Kiwi sympathies are more likely to be with the Palestinians - particularly those cooped up in the open-air camp that is the Gaza.

The Key Government needs to go much further. The blockade has not stopped Hamas - nor will it ever do so. But the lives of ordinary Gazans have been devastated.

The ironies are acute: Israel's decision to fire on activists on the aid ship has been compared to the callous actions the British took to try to stop the Jewish exodus to Palestine.

Even Israel's staunchest ally the United States has failed to persuade the Israeli Government to demonstrate some common sense.

Instead of operating in the backrooms, the Key Government needs to find its voice and call for an end to the blockade and plans to intercept other aid flotillas en route to the Gaza. It's a message John Key is aptly suited to provide - both at home and in Israel.