Fiji to send delegation to Israel ahead of controversial Jerusalem embassy opening in 2024

The Pacific Islands nation of Fiji will send a delegation headed by Deputy Prime Minister Villiame Gavoka to Israel this month before opening an embassy in the city of Jerusalem in 2024, officials said, fulfilling an election promise by Gavoka's political party.

A large delegation will travel on a specially chartered Fiji Airways flight to attend the Festival of the Tabernacles in Israel, which runs from 29 September to 6 October, the officials said.

Fiji will open an embassy in Jerusalem next year, a spokeswoman from the Fiji prime minister's office said.

"The establishment of the embassy represents a significant milestone in Fiji's diplomatic relations with Israel," she told Reuters in an email.

Last month Pacific Islands neighbour Papua New Guinea (PNG) opened an embassy in Jerusalem, becoming only the fifth country with a full diplomatic mission in the city where Palestinians live under Israeli occupation.

PNG joined embassies from the United States, Kosovo, Guatemala and Honduras in Jerusalem, while most countries maintain their diplomatic representation in the coastal city of Tel Aviv, Israel's main economic hub.

PNG's decision was driven by pro-Israeli church groups in the deeply Christian Pacific nation, and Prime Minister James Marape said Israel would pay the embassy's costs for two years.

Fiji's Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka agreed to open an embassy in Jerusalem to win support from Gavoka's Social Democratic Liberal Party to form a coalition government after national elections in December 2022, a deal that saw Fiji's first change of government in 14 years.

In June Christian-majority Fiji allocated funding for an embassy in Israel in its national budget, but Israel later offered financial help if the embassy were to be located in Jerusalem, the Fiji Times reported last month.

Gavoka wrote on social media last month that he had made the location of the embassy in Jerusalem a "non negotiable matter in our coalition agreement".

Israel has illegally occupied Jerusalem since 1967, formally annexing it in 1980 when the Knesset designated it as the capital of Israel.

The move was not recognised by most of the international community, who kept their embassies in Tel Aviv. Israel wants all nations with a diplomatic presence in the country to move their embassies to Jerusalem. Palestinians, on the other hand, seek the east of the occupied city as the capital of their future state.

(Reuters)