Scott Morrison’s policy shift to consider moving Australia’s Israel embassy from Tel Aviv to the capital, Jerusalem, provoked a predictable backlash, particularly among Arab nations.
More than a dozen members of the Council of Arab Ambassadors assembled for what they called “crisis” talks in Canberra on Tuesday. These are men who represent countries such as Lebanon, Kuwait, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Sudan. You’d think they would know what a crisis is.
Our Prime Minister raising the Jerusalem issue is hardly a crisis — for anybody. Indeed, this might be a golden opportunity for the Palestinians and could help pave the way for their own Jerusalem capital when peace is secured.
Australia’s embassy in Egypt is in Cairo, that country’s capital. Our embassy in Saudi Arabia is in Riyadh, its capital. The Australian embassy in Lebanon is in the capital, Beirut. It makes sense that Australia’s embassy in Israel follow that internationally observed pattern.
At the 10th meeting of the Australia-UK-Israel Leadership Dialogue in Jerusalem in July it was argued that Australia should be the next Western country to move its embassy to Jerusalem. This was counter to the position of Malcolm Turnbull, then prime minister, and his foreign affairs minister, Julie Bishop. But Christopher Pyne, who regularly leads the dialogue’s Australian delegation, was there and so was former prime minister Tony Abbott, a firm believer that our embassy should move.
Read the article by Albert Dadon in The Australian.