Netanyahu confirms Australian visit
Australia's Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said she is “very pleased” that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accepted her invitation to visit Australia in the next three months.
AUSTRALIA’S Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said she is “very pleased” that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accepted her invitation to visit Australia in the next three months.
Netanyahu announced his trip Down Under at the start of this week’s cabinet meeting in Jerusalem.
“In the next three months, I will leave for Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Singapore and Australia,” he said.
“For three of these, if I am not mistaken, it will be the first visit by an Israeli Prime Minister.”
While precise details have not yet been confirmed, Bishop told The AJN this week, “Should the visit proceed, it will be the first ever to Australia by a sitting Israeli Prime Minister.
“Prime Minister Netanyahu’s proposed visit will provide an important opportunity to showcase Australia and discuss ways to further grow the bilateral relationship, particularly in the fields of innovation, technology and trade.
“It will also be an opportunity to highlight the major contribution of our Australian Jewish community and to explore ways to deepen shared interests through our strong people-to-people links.”
Jerusalem Post deputy managing editor Caroline Glick, who has a masters degree in public policy, said that Netanyahu’s trip “might be the most significant diplomatic visits he makes in his tenure in office”.
She said that each of the four countries have something to offer Israel in terms of intelligence, cyber warfare and economic capabilities.
“Australia, a major Western economy, is moving toward China as America has become less engaged in the Pacific,” Glick said.
“Israel has an acute interest in using Australia as a platform for expanding its ties to China and other Asian countries, both because of the economic advantages such ties convey and due to China’s strategic importance to Russia.”
Australia’s Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has met Netanyahu twice since becoming Prime Minister last year: first at the Paris Climate Conference late last year, when the two met on sidelines to discuss Islamic extremists; and then earlier this year at the United Nations in New York, when Netanyahu described Turnbull as a great friend of Israel.
JOSHUA LEVI
comments