By Boluwatife Adedokun
Australia has reversed it’s decision to make West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, changing the decision of the former Prime Minister Scott Morrison administration in 2018.
This is made known through the Foreign Minister, Penny Wong.
He said, “Today the Government has reaffirmed Australia’s previous and longstanding position that Jerusalem is a final status issue that should be resolved as part of any peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian people,” Foreign Minister Penny Wong said in a statement.
“This reverses the Morrison Government’s recognition of West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.”
The Foreign Minister explained that the Australia’s embassy would be in Tel Aviv, adding that Canberra was commited to a two-state solution that Isreal and a future Palestinian state coexist, in peace and security within internationally recognized borders.
She said, “We will not support an approach that undermines this prospect.”
Jerusalem is a great point to raach a peace deal between Isreal and the Palestinians.
Israel respects the whole city, including the eastern area it attached after the 1967 Center East conflict, as its capital while Palestinian authorities, with wide global sponsorship, need involved East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state they desire to lay out in the involved West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Palestinian Power hails the move
The Palestinian Power hailed Australia’s move that will probably bring the Israeli-Palestinian issue into spotlight.
She noted,“We welcome Australia’s decision with regards to Jerusalem & its call for a two-state solution in accordance with international legitimacy,” the Palestinian Authority’s civil affairs minister, Hussein al-Sheikh, said on Twitter.
Sheikh hailed Australia’s “affirmation that the future of sovereignty over Jerusalem depends on the permanent solution based on international legitimacy”.
Shahram Akbarzadeh from Deakin University said that the Australia’s move will revive the international consensus on the status of Jerusalem.
“Australia was diverging from that consensus but now it’s coming back to it.
“It will definitely bring the issue, the Palestinian-Israeli dispute and the future of a two-state solution into spotlight,” he told Al Jazeera from Melbourne, adding that the international community has a big responsibility to address this long-standing problem.
“There is an international consensus that the status of Jerusalem should be handled, decided as part of a larger negotiation on the future of the two states within Israel and Palestine. They cannot be divorced from that matter.”
“Most countries recognise that the status the final status of Jerusalem is to be determined in talks on Palestinian statehood and Palestinians want East Jerusalem as their capital,” he added.
Lapid portrayed the move as a “hurried reaction”, adding: “We might dare to dream that the Australian government oversees different matters all the more genuinely and expertly.
The Israeli foreign ministry said it had called the Australian envoy to stop a conventional dissent.
Former Australian Minister, Morrison declared his moderate government would perceive West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital after the US backpedaled on many years of strategy by perceiving the city and moving the US international safe haven there from Tel Aviv.
The Australian choice was generally reprimanded by favorable to Palestinian gatherings as well as by the Work party, which was then in resistance and vowed to turn around the move in the event that it was chosen.
