Donald Trump has been wise to move so quickly to repair US relations with Israel after the debilitating frostiness of the Obama years. His “warm” call to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggests a welcome return to reality in Washington over one of its most vital bilateral relationships. It places such crucial issues as the promised relocation of the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and a hard look at the nuclear deal with Iran high on the agenda for President Trump.
Jerusalem is incontrovertibly Israel’s capital. It is where the Jewish state’s parliament, its executive offices and judiciary are located. Yet not since 2006, when Costa Rica and El Salvador closed their embassies, has there been a country bold enough to maintain its diplomatic representation in the holy city. Instead, the international community, with the detachment from reality that frequently characterises its policy choices on Israel, has maintained its embassies (Australia’s among them) in Tel Aviv, lest Palestinians object. The rationale for this has been founded in the same sort of counterintuitive logic that earlier this month saw 70 countries attend a widely trumpeted Middle East peace conference in Paris on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute that included neither Israelis nor Palestinians.
Read the full editorial at The Australian.