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Prime Minister Morrison’s statements on Jerusalem, JCPOA, UN

16 October 2018

The Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry, the peak rep­res­ent­at­ive body of the Aus­trali­an Jewish community, warmly welcomes the announce­ments by Prime Minister Morrison regarding the status of Jerusalem, the Iran Deal and the Palestini­an bid to chair a United Nations group, the G77.
It has long been the position of the ECAJ that Australia should recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and consider relo­cat­ing the Aus­trali­an embassy, currently in Tel Aviv, to the gov­ern­ment precinct in west Jerusalem. Every State has the right to determine where within its sovereign territory its capital should be located. Jerusalem was the capital of the Jewish state 3,000 years ago and it remains so today. Recog­nising this simple fact would in no way preclude a future agreement between Israel and the Palestini­ans and we welcome the Prime Minister’s affirm­a­tion of support for a two-state solution to the conflict.
The ECAJ also supported the decision of the Trump Admin­is­tra­tion to withdraw from the JCPOA (“Iran Deal”), which did nothing to curb Iran’s aggres­sion or regional designs. We favour the impos­i­tion of sanctions on the Iranian regime until such time as a com­pre­hens­ive deal can be agreed that prevents Iran from acting as the world’s foremost sponsor of terrorism, and fuelling dev­ast­at­ing conflict in Syria, Yemen, and well beyond the Middle East.
We also support the decision of the gov­ern­ment to oppose the Palestini­an bid to chair the United Nations group, the G77. For decades, the Palestini­ans have manip­u­lated inter­na­tion­al bodies, not least the UN, to advance their agenda of seeking to isolate and del­e­git­im­ise the State of Israel. The result has been to per­man­ently mire the UN in the conflict, at the expense of its cred­ib­il­ity, while also limiting its ability to support genuinely oppressed peoples through­out the world. We have seen out­rageous res­ol­u­tions from “Zionism is racism” to denials of the Jew­ish­ness of the Western Wall in Jerusalem. The Palestini­ans must not be rewarded for this and must instead be shown that the path to peace lies only through honest nego­ti­ations with Israel.
We thank the Prime Minister on behalf of the community we represent for his moral clarity on these issues.
Contact:
Alex Ryvchin | Co-CEO
ph: 02 8353 8505 | m: 0478 297 245
e: aryvchin@ecaj.org.au | www.ecaj.org.au