{"id":535987,"date":"2026-03-12T17:39:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T17:39:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/535987\/"},"modified":"2026-03-12T17:39:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T17:39:09","slug":"australia-orders-staff-to-leave-israel-and-uae","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/535987\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia orders staff to leave Israel and UAE"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"et_pb_title_meta_container\">March 13, 2026 03:30 | <a href=\"https:\/\/michaelwest.com.au\/category\/external-feeds\/aap-news\/\" rel=\"category tag nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">News<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Australia has ordered all non-essential officials to leave Israel and the United Arab Emirates two weeks after the US and Israel\u2019s war on Iran engulfed the Middle East.<\/p>\n<p>Foreign Minister Penny Wong said staff were directed to leave \u201cdue to the deteriorating security situation\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEssential Australian officials will remain in-country to support Australians who need it,\u201d she said in a statement posted on social media on Thursday night.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe continue to advise Australians not to travel to Israel and the UAE.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">The Australian Government has directed the departure of non-essential Australian officials posted to Israel and the UAE, due to the deteriorating security situation. Essential Australian officials will remain in-country to support Australians who need it.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Senator Penny Wong (@SenatorWong) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/SenatorWong\/status\/2032031484249587877?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">March 12, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe urge you to leave the Middle East if you can and if it\u2019s safe to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Senator Wong\u2019s statement comes after the government told families of Australian officials in Israel and Lebanon to leave in the days before the war began on February 28.<\/p>\n<p>Voluntary departures were also offered to diplomats\u2019 dependents in the UAE, Jordan and Qatar.<\/p>\n<p>The war has so far killed about 2000 people and caused the biggest disruption to global oil supplies in decades.<\/p>\n<p>Oil prices that had \u200ccome down earlier this week after US President Donald Trump said the war \u2060would soon be over soared back above $US100 a barrel after an apparent escalation in Iranian attacks on shipping in the Persian Gulf.<\/p>\n<p>The two-week-old conflict has prompted thousands of Australians to flee the region, with the government saying on Tuesday that more than 2600 Australians were returning home on commercial flights.<\/p>\n<p>Senator Wong said the overwhelming majority of Australian citizens who were travelling through the Middle East and became stuck when the war broke out had returned home.<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"m-a-box-avatar-url\" href=\"https:\/\/michaelwest.com.au\/author\/aap-news\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/AAP-Logo1-400x400.jpg\" class=\"attachment-200x200 size-200x200\" alt=\"AAP News\" itemprop=\"image\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Australian Associated Press is the beating heart of Australian news. AAP is Australia\u2019s only independent national newswire and has been delivering accurate, reliable and fast news content to the media industry, government and corporate sector for 85 years. We keep Australia informed.<\/p>\n<p>Latest stories from our writers<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"March 13, 2026 03:30 | News Australia has ordered all non-essential officials to leave Israel and the United&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":535988,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-535987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=535987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535987\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/535988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=535987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=535987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=535987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}