Allowing domestic politics to dictate foreign policy is never wise. Allowing internal party politics to determine external settings is even worse.
But this is exactly what the Labor government has done with its latest clumsy announcement about how it will refer to disputes in the Middle East.
In an attempt to avoid embarrassment for Anthony Albanese at Labor’s upcoming national conference, the Labor Government has decided to rewrite the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Last year, it declared that Jerusalem is not the capital of Israel, in defiance of geography, history and decades of state practice. This week, it conjured back into existence the Ottoman Empire as a sovereign entity, more than a century after its passing.
When the state of Israel was created in 1948, the entire territory west of the Jordan River was under a British Mandate, granted by the League of Nations following the defeat and collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of WWI. The UN Partition Plan of 1947 envisaged the creation of independent Jewish and Arab states in the British Mandate territory. The Jewish population accepted the plan. Arab leaders rejected it. The plan was never implemented. War broke out. And so was born the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Read the article by Dave Sharma in The Australian.