MEDIA RELEASE
7 December 2017

Recognition of Jerusalem as the Capital of Israel

The Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry, as the peak rep­res­ent­at­ive body of the Aus­trali­an Jewish community, welcomes the announce­ment by US President Donald J. Trump recog­nising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and con­firm­ing that the US Embassy in Israel will be relocated to Jerusalem in recog­ni­tion of the city’s status as Israel’s seat of gov­ern­ment.
For many years, the ECAJ has supported such measures and has called in its policy platform for the Aus­trali­an embassy to be relocated to Jerusalem.
Israel’s par­lia­ment, Min­is­teri­al offices, Supreme Court, President’s residence and Prime Minister’s residence have been located in Jerusalem since the State of Israel was estab­lished in 1948. When gov­ern­ment officials from other countries visit Israel, they meet with Israeli gov­ern­ment officials, and one another, in Jerusalem. When the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat made his first visit to Israel in 1977, two years before Egypt and Israel signed a peace treaty, he went to Jerusalem and addressed the Israeli par­lia­ment there.
Recog­ni­tion of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is therefore a pragmatic acknow­ledge­ment of an existing reality.
President Trump clearly stated that the US has not made any pre-judgement about the bound­ar­ies of Jerusalem or sought to alter the status quo con­cern­ing the Holy sites. He referred to the Temple Mount also by its Arabic name, Haram al-Sharif.
The US embassy is likely to be relocated to Israel’s gov­ern­ment precinct in the western part of the city, which has been part of Israel’s sovereign territory since 1948, not the part of Jerusalem that Israel captured from Jordan when it repelled Jordan’s military attack in 1967, and is mis­lead­ingly referred to as “Occupied East Jerusalem”.
Moving the embassy from one location within Israel’s sovereign borders to another therefore does not pre-empt the outcome of nego­ti­ations between Israel and the Palestini­ans for a two-state solution. The recog­ni­tion of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel does not preclude the des­ig­na­tion of the pre­dom­in­antly Arab neigh­bor­hoods in the eastern part of Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestini­an state, as part of a com­pre­hens­ive peace agreement.
We urge the Palestini­an lead­er­ship to return to face to face nego­ti­ations with Israel rather than try to extract con­ces­sions from Israel through inter­na­tion­al pressure. Israel has made three public offers to the Palestini­ans which, after modest land swaps, would have given them a sovereign State over territory equal in size to 100% of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The attempt to establish a Palestini­an state in the absence of a com­pre­hens­ive peace agreement with Israel violates inter­na­tion­al agree­ments and would pre­cip­it­ate even worse violence and bloodshed than the conflict has produced to date.
Finally, we express our gratitude to the Inter­na­tion­al Christian Embassy Jerusalem, Bridges for Peace and Chris­ti­ans for Israel for sub­mit­ting a petition signed by 8,133 Aus­trali­ans to the Aus­trali­an Par­lia­ment calling for the Aus­trali­an embassy to be moved to Jerusalem, and to the Senator from Victoria, James Paterson, for tabling the petition on 5 December 2017. We hope that together with the announce­ment by the US Admin­is­tra­tion the petition will provide the impetus for a similar move by Australia in due course.
Contact:
Peter Wertheim AM | Executive Director
phone: 02 8353 8500 | m: 0408 160 904 | fax 02 9361 5888
e: [email protected] | www.ecaj.org.au