The piece has been published in ABC Religion & Ethics by ECAJ co-CEO Peter Wertheim AM.

Late on Monday, 17 October 2022, a news story labelled “Exclusive” was published by the Guardian Australia, reporting that the Depart­ment of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) had removed two sentences from its website that had, until then, confirmed that “Australia recog­nised West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.”

The Guardian’s political editor, Katharine Murphy, sub­sequently disclosed on the ABC’s Insider program that the Guardian had for “more than a week” repeatedly ques­tioned DFAT about whether this content would change. The full cir­cum­stances — including the question of whether any other people were involved in these com­mu­nic­a­tions — have not been publicly revealed to date.

According to the Guardian story, the removal of the sentences from the DFAT website meant that “Australia has quietly dropped its recog­ni­tion of West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.” The story was quickly picked up by other media outlets.

Because last Monday was the eve of the Jewish holy day of Simchat Torah, the Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry (ECAJ) and other Jewish organ­isa­tions were precluded from making any public comment that evening and the following day.

On the evening of 17 October, the Foreign Minister, Senator Penny Wong, issued a statement which seemed to deny the veracity of the Guardian story. “The former Gov­ern­ment made the decision to recognise West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. No decision to change that has been made by the current gov­ern­ment.”

This written statement was sent to the ECAJ at about 8:00pm AEDT on 17 October, with a message reas­sur­ing us that there was no cause for concern. This was sub­sequently reported by numerous media organ­isa­tions in Australia and inter­na­tion­ally. No intim­a­tion was given by the gov­ern­ment that the policy confirmed in this statement was, or might be, on the verge of being over­turned.

A meeting of the government’s national cabinet took place early on the morning of Tuesday, 18 October. It decided that, not­with­stand­ing the Foreign Minister’s statement from the night before, Australia would in fact reverse the government’s recog­ni­tion of West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

The troubling lack of consultation

As far as we know, the gov­ern­ment made no attempt to consult with, or even advise, anyone in the Jewish community about this decision before it was taken. This was contrary to a number of assur­ances that had been given, among others, to the ECAJ by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese during his Zoom con­fer­ence with the ECAJ and wider Jewish community on 13 July 2021, and at a Sydney fund-raising dinner with Jewish community sup­port­ers on 22 March 2022, that no major changes in Aus­trali­an policy con­cern­ing Israel would be taken without con­sulta­tion with the community’s rep­res­ent­at­ives. The Foreign Minister had given similar assur­ances when she met with Jewish community rep­res­ent­at­ives. Israel’s many sup­port­ers within the Labor Party — including federal MP Josh Burns — were equally taken by surprise.

While a number of people within the gov­ern­ment privately conceded that the policy reversal was prob­lem­at­ic in substance, and that the process that led to it was indefens­ible, offi­cially the gov­ern­ment attempted to justify itself. It attempted to deflect attention away from the short­com­ings of its processes by reviving its criticism of the previous Coalition government’s “decision to play politics” in December 2018, when it had recog­nised West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, following the announce­ment of its inten­tions to that effect in the lead-up to the by-election for the seat of Wentworth, with its large Jewish con­stitu­ency.

The criticism was a plausible one, but it over­looked a critical fact. The December 2018 decision to recognise West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital was not made until after the com­ple­tion of a rigorous review and con­sulta­tion process with “a broad range of Aus­trali­an community rep­res­ent­at­ives, including some eminent Aus­trali­an poli­cy­makers”, conducted by the depart­ment­al sec­ret­ar­ies from Prime Minister and Cabinet, Foreign Affairs and Trade, Defence and Home Affairs.

This was not mere window dressing. Those who conducted the con­sulta­tion recom­men­ded that only West Jerusalem, rather than Jerusalem, be recog­nised, and that the Aus­trali­an embassy in Israel should remain in Tel Aviv for the time being. The then Prime Minister Scott Morrison accepted these lim­it­a­tions, even though they were not what he had proposed.

Nothing even remotely approach­ing such a process was under­taken by the current gov­ern­ment when the policy was reversed.

The gov­ern­ment also sought to defend itself from cri­ti­cisms from the Jewish community by asserting that Labor had committed itself all along to reversing Australia’s recog­ni­tion of West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. This assertion does not paint the whole picture. As Shadow Foreign Minister, Penny Wong tweeted in December 2018: “Labor does not support uni­lat­er­al recog­ni­tion of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and in Gov­ern­ment would reverse this decision.”

This policy was confirmed expli­citly in the lead-up to the May 2019 federal election in the ALP’s written answers in response to the ECAJ’s pre-election ques­tion­naire.

After its election loss in 2019, Labor went quiet on the subject. Those who had opposed Australia’s recog­ni­tion of West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital had issued a chorus of dire warnings that such recog­ni­tion would imperil Australia’s dip­lo­mat­ic and trade rela­tion­ships with Muslim majority countries — espe­cially the pending trade agreement with Indonesia — and lead to mass street protests and violence among Palestini­ans and in the wider Middle East. None of these pre­dic­tions came to pass. On the contrary, from 2020 onwards, five Arab countries signed nor­m­al­isa­tion agree­ments with Israel. The deal with Indonesia went ahead in March 2019.

It was against this back­ground that the ECAJ’s pre-election survey in 2022 asked the can­did­ates: “Please outline your party’s policies on the recog­ni­tion of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, including any addi­tion­al measures it would take if elected to gov­ern­ment.”

Labor’s answer this time was:

Labor believes the status of Jerusalem should be resolved as part of any peace nego­ti­ations and two-state solution — this is the position of suc­cess­ive Aus­trali­an gov­ern­ments. We note that in recent years, Israel and some of its neigh­bours have taken positive steps to normalise their relations which Labor has strongly supported as further building blocks towards regional peace and stability.

There was no statement provided, as pre­vi­ously, that would indicate Labor’s intention to reverse the Morrison government’s decision. Was this mis­lead­ing? It was certainly less than full dis­clos­ure.

The historical status of West Jerusalem

On the sub­stant­ive issue con­cern­ing the status of Jerusalem, the government’s stance was equally prob­lem­at­ic. The rationale given by the federal gov­ern­ment for its decision was that Australia’s recog­ni­tion of West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital had pre-empted the outcome of peace nego­ti­ations between Israel and the Palestini­ans on a key (“final status”) issue, and thereby under­mined the prospects for reaching agreement.

In reality, West Jerusalem has not been the subject of nego­ti­ations between Israel and the Palestini­ans for the simple reason that West Jerusalem has been a part of Israel’s sovereign territory since the founding of the State in 1948, and its official capital since January 1950. The territory of West Jerusalem lies outside the scope of UN Security Council and General Assembly res­ol­u­tions con­cern­ing Jerusalem that have been passed since 1967, which are expressly limited in their applic­a­tion to the parts of Jerusalem occupied by Israel since 1967. No UN res­ol­u­tion has ever called on Israel to withdraw from West Jerusalem.

West Jerusalem is the location not only of the Knesset, Supreme Court official res­id­ences of the President and Prime Minister, and key organs of gov­ern­ment, but also of other insti­tu­tions fun­da­ment­al to the State — including Mount Herzl, the national war cemetery, the Holocaust Memorial (Yad Vashem) and the Israel Museum.

Since the conquest of the city by King David and the Israel­ites three millennia ago, Jerusalem has not been the capital of any State other than Jewish States — the ancient Kingdoms of Israel and Judah and the modern State of Israel. Over the last three thousand years, when it has not been the capital of a Jewish State, Jerusalem has been under foreign rule.

Leaving aside its dele­ter­i­ous effect on the rela­tion­ship between the federal gov­ern­ment and the Jewish community, the reversal of Australia’s recog­ni­tion of West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital does not bode well for the future of Australia’s relations with Israel. This is no way to treat an ally whose intel­li­gence-sharing with Australia has prevented at least one terrorist attack against Aus­trali­ans that we know of. Worse still, the decades of bipar­tis­an­ship on key questions having to do with the Israel-Palestini­an conflict will now most likely give way to a perpetual cycle of partisan con­test­a­tion.

In the meantime, we will continue to express the community’s oppos­i­tion force­fully to the gov­ern­ment about both the substance of Australia’s changed policy and the process, such as it was, that led to it. And we will work to undo this appalling political decision.