Jerusalem shift angers Israel lobby, reveals Australia has its own foreign policy

In all the intractable and complicated aspects of the conflict between Israel and Palestine, the status of Jerusalem is one of the more straightforward: Israel’s claim to West Jerusalem has never been recognised, because the United Nations Partition Plan in 1947 identified Jerusalem as having a separate body status. That still holds under international law.

For that matter, Israel’s control of East Jerusalem can never be recognised under international law either, because it’s an occupying power there — in exactly the same way that Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory are illegal under international law.

The rage emanating from Israel and the Israel lobby in Australia over the Albanese government’s decision to return to the international status quo and withdraw recognition of West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is thus fury that Australia has chosen to observe international law, rather than pander to an apartheid state dedicated to suppressing and immiserating Palestinians.

Scott Morrison’s recognition of West Jerusalem had two motivations: the first was to try to save the seat of Wentworth for Dave Sharma in the 2018 byelection, which it failed to do, though Sharma briefly occupied the seat from 2019-22 before being rightly sent packing by his voters.

The other was to curry favour with Donald Trump, which was even by US standards an absurdly anti-Palestinian administration.

Sharma, Australia’s ambassador to the corrupt Netanyahu government before his disastrous tilt at politics, has emerged from obscurity today to attack the government’s decision, along with a slew of commentators at The Australian. Say what you like about Chris Mitchell, but at least he was prepared to stand up to the Israel lobby and encouraged fair reporting by John Lyons of Israel’s murderous occupation of Palestine when he ran the Oz.

One can understand the rage, to an extent, because Israel and its apologists here have grown used to almost unthinking obeisance from most Australian politicians and much of the media.

The Coalition readily turned a blind eye to the implementation of apartheid, the constant extension of illegal settlements and the routine murder of Palestinians by Israeli soldiers. Much of the Labor Party has been indistinguishable from its opponents; efforts by Bob Carr during his brief stint as foreign affairs minister to have a marginally less anti-Palestinian policy were met with relentless opposition by Julia Gillard.

Politicians on all sides happily cultivate close relations with Israeli diplomats. It’s an open secret within Labor, for example, that then Israeli ambassador Yuval Rotem was actually present on the night when a right-wing powerbroker was helping to organise the removal of Kevin Rudd from the prime ministership. Rudd, famously, had made the mistake of complaining to Israel about Mossad forging Australian passports to use on its murder operations abroad.

There’s no doubt DFAT badly bungled its handling of the decision: a cabinet decision, particularly of such sensitivity, is for ministers to announce, not for departmental web content managers. Presumably intended to “go live” when Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong announced the change, some fool went ahead and updated the site without checking, or even being faintly aware of the high-profile nature of what they were doing; if you think it’s fine to casually change the status of Jerusalem on DFAT’s website, it’s probably a good hint that you shouldn’t be working at DFAT.

Nonetheless, Israel’s fury isn’t that of the aggrieved but of the privileged, enraged that a government assumed to be compliant had displayed an annoying adherence to international law. Those of us who were around in the 1980s will recall the same tone adopted by diplomats from apartheid South Africa, toward which Australia — unlike Israel — developed a commendable record of criticism under both sides of politics, despite the efforts of right-wing extremists within the Liberal Party. But Israel has many more friends around Canberra.