The Albanese government’s welcome decision not to recognise West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital brings Australia back into line with international law and virtually all the global community.
The government sensibly recognises that competing claims to Jerusalem should be peacefully settled by negotiation, in accordance with international law, not by unilateral claims imposed by force and rubber-stamped by allies.
Israelis, Jews, Christians, Palestinians, Muslims and Arabs all have important historical, spiritual and cultural attachments to the cosmopolitan city of Jerusalem. As the British mandate in Palestine ended in the late 1940s, the United Nations endorsed a “partition plan” to create two separate Arab and Jewish countries. Jerusalem was to have a separate international status, administered by the UN, given its importance to different peoples.
The plan was supported by many Zionists, but opposed by most Arabs, since it unfairly allocated a disproportionate share of land to Jews relative to their share of the population.
Zionists relied on the plan for legitimacy when declaring Israel to be an independent state in 1948, a unilateral move not envisaged by the UN. But Israel refused to accept the plan for Jerusalem. The “plan” has underpinned the idea of a two-state solution ever since.
About three quarters of the world, plus the UN and the International Criminal Court, now recognise Palestine as a state, although Australia remains in the minority that does not.
Read the article by Professor Ben Saul in The Age.