Immigration NZ accused of labelling Israel 'Palestine'

The offending map was captured by the Israel Institute of New Zealand before being pulled down.

The Immigration department has offended New Zealand's Israeli community with a map that appeared to label their country "Palestine".

Immigration New Zealand says it's taken down a fact sheet on its website about Palestinian refugees after a complaint last week.

Israel Institute of New Zealand director Ashley Church has called for an investigation and says, among other issues, "the most immediately obvious of the errors was a map labelling the whole of modern-day Israel as 'Palestine'."

"This is incredibly offensive and the equivalent of New Zealand Immigration displaying a map of the UK which removed Scotland and Wales and referred to the entirety of the British Isles as England," he said.

"Immigration New Zealand is a Government Agency which projects a view of New Zealand to the world. It is completely unacceptable for them to publish an image that erases Israel from the map."

An INZ spokeswoman said the document was meant to give additional information about the humanitarian situation in Palestine and New Zealand's refugee programme.

"We want the information in these facts sheets to be absolutely correct and clear and have taken the precaution of temporarily removing this fact sheet on Palestinian Refugees from the site to review the information," she said.

New Zealand has long supported a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.