- Details remain scant one day after body of 57-year-old diplomat Du Wei is found at his home in Tel Aviv
- Top Israeli foreign ministry official extends condolences to deputy ambassador Dai Yuming
“As far as I know, China’s ambassador to Israel Du Wei passed away in ambassador’s residence in Tel Aviv this morning for physical reasons. It happened abruptly,” said Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of state media tabloid Global Times in a tweet late on Sunday night.
Du was last seen in public on Tuesday in a video conference with an official from Israel’s foreign affairs ministry, according to the embassy website.
James Dorsey, senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, said Du’s untimely death should be seen as a personal, rather than a political, tragedy for the growing relationship between China and Israel, but he said it came at an important moment for the two countries because of rising US-China tensions.
Dorsey said Israel’s increasing hi-tech cooperation with China, as well as continuing US hostility to Iran – which has close ties with China – were potentially problematic for relations between the two countries.
“I’m not sure that the China-Israel relationship can be seen as independent of the Israel-US relationship. One could argue that the Chinese may be well advised to very quickly replace him soon,” Dorsey said. “Israel could find itself on the fault line of deepening US-China decoupling,” he added.
Israel’s ambassador to China in quarantine after ‘infected’ flight to Seoul
Following a brief trip to Jerusalem on Wednesday – his first foreign visit since March – US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo renewed warnings about China-Israel ties in an interview with Israeli state-owned media outlet Kan News.
“We do not want the Chinese Communist Party to have access to Israeli infrastructure, Israeli communication systems, all of the things that put Israeli citizens at risk,” he said.
China’s embassy in Tel Aviv blasted Pompeo’s comments as “absurd” and “ill-intentioned”. However, the embassy statement was not written by Du, but by a spokesperson.
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