Published: 21 October 2022
Last updated: 5 March 2024
No one should be surprised that a Labor government reversed the decision to recognise West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, but it could have been more strategic and more forward-looking.
Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and has been since soon after the declaration of the state.
West Jerusalem is the seat of Israel’s government and will remain the capital if, and we hope when, a Palestinian state is declared, and the final status of Jerusalem is resolved.
East Jerusalem, Al-Quds in Arabic, is a part of the occupied territories captured by Israel in 1967 and will probably become the capital of a future Palestinian state.
Unfortunately, successive Israeli governments have refused to recognise this distinction, annexing East Jerusalem and, in 1980, passing the Jerusalem Law which declared Jerusalem the unified capital of Israel.
The vast majority of countries in the world have resisted recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital until the status of the city is resolved. Australia this week re-joined that majority when the Minister of Foreign Affairs Penny Wong announced after a cabinet meeting that Australia would no longer recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
An Australian Government with true international leadership would neither have retained a raw commitment to West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital nor simply reversed it.
The impact is largely symbolic but unhelpful. The decision does nothing to advance a two-state solution or show international leadership. As a policy implemented by a recently elected Labor government, it might have been predictable, but the timing was poor and the manner extraordinarily clumsy.
Australia only changed its policy to recognise West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in 2018 after the Trump administration recognised the capital in a nod to Christian evangelists and moved its embassy. Australia never moved its embassy and remains one of the 86 of 90 countries with diplomatic missions in Israel that locate them in the greater Tel Aviv area. (The exceptions are Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo, and the US.)
