Mexican Senator Gerardo Fernández Noroña of the Morena party has taken a 10-day leave to travel to the Middle East, saying he will meet with Palestinian authorities and bear witness to “the genocide” in Gaza.

The trip was organized by the Palestinian Authority and his flight will be paid for by the United Arab Emirates, he said.

In a news conference this week, Fernández Noroña said he was accepting an invitation issued over the summer, when he served as president of the Senate, Mexico’s 128-member upper house.

His time in the rotating position ended Aug. 31, but the at-large senator elected by proportional representation (he doesn’t represent a particular state) is just 14 months into his six-year term.

In August, the Mexico City native told reporters his goal was to “rescue orphaned Palestinian children” and offer them refuge in Mexico, framing it as a humanitarian mission. However, the proposed trip did not take place then.​

This week, he said, “Despite the agreed-upon ceasefire, the genocide continues,” explaining plans to meet in the UAE and Jordan while spending “the bulk of my time” in Palestine — the geographically contiguous West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the separate, war-ravaged Gaza Strip.

“If the Palestinian Authority has a visit to Gaza planned, I’ll do it,” he added.

The senator said he was not legally required to request leave, but chose to do so given public scrutiny.

His absence began Thursday and will run through Sunday, Nov. 2, the final day of Día de los Muertos celebrations.

Fernández Noroña downplayed the risk of U.S. retaliation, saying having his visa revoked is the worst that could happen.

Senator Alejandro Murat, chair of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, defended the trip as part of “parliamentary diplomacy.”

But opposition figures and activists questioned the timing and financing.

Cecilia Patricia “Ceci” Flores, the founder and national leader of the Madres Buscadoras de Sonora — a collective of mothers that searches for Mexico’s missing persons — invited Fernández Noroña to join her mission instead of flying more than 12,000 kilometers to the Middle East.

“You don’t need to go so far to satisfy that urge to help,” she wrote on social media, offering to fund his trip to Sinaloa to help find her son, missing since 2015. “In Mexico, we’re short on hands and the willingness to end the massacre that’s taking our children from us.”

Guillermo Valencia, leader of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in Michoacán, called Fernández Noroña’s move “hypocrisy,” urging him to “speak up for the victims” at home.

(Earlier this year, a Senate session erupted into a fistfight between PRI party leader Alejandro “Alito” Moreno and then-Senate president Fernández Noroña.)

In an opinion column in El País, journalist Zedryk Raziel accused the senator of “stumbling over his own words,” highlighting doubts about whether he can legally let a foreign government fund his trip. He cited experts who called the visit “reckless” given that Noroña is no longer Senate president and remains under scrutiny for alleged ethical lapses, including luxury travel and undeclared assets.

Fernández Noroña dismissed the criticism, insisting his trip reflects “solidarity with the Palestinian people” and rejecting claims of impropriety.

“Any senator can receive this type of invitation,” he said.

With reports from El Universal, La Jornada, Infobae and El País