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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