{"id":1696,"date":"2022-11-10T18:22:46","date_gmt":"2022-11-10T17:22:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/?p=1696"},"modified":"2025-06-11T10:34:12","modified_gmt":"2025-06-11T08:34:12","slug":"australia-reverses-jerusalem-decision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/australia-reverses-jerusalem-decision\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia reverses Jerusalem decision"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Australia reverses Jerusalem decision<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n
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In mid-October Australia reversed the decision to recognize West Jerusalem as Israel\u2019s capital, a decision made four years ago by then Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his government<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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For a thousand years, Jerusalem was the capital of Israel and the center of the country\u2019s religious life. The Western Wall is all that remains of the wall around the ruins of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem that was destroyed by the Roman Empire in 70 AD. Photo: Omer Markovski<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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M<\/span>orrisson\u2019s decision followed that of then US President Donald Trump, recognizing Jerusalem as Israel\u2019s capital in December 2017. The US Congress (in 1990 and 1995) and the Senate (in 1995 and 2017) had already recognized Jerusalem overwhelmingly as Israel\u2019s capital, and the US Embassy was moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in May 2018.
\nAccording to the BBC, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said that the 2018 decision had undermined peace and \u201cput Australia out of step with the majority of the international community\u201d, but she otherwise had no views at all on which cities individual countries choose as their capitals.
\nPenny Wong, who herself was born in the Muslim country of Malaysia but considers herself a Christian, called the previous government\u2019s decision a \u201ccynical ploy\u201d to win over Jewish voters ahead of an Australian election.
\nFormer Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid criticized Australia\u2019s decision.
\n\u201cJerusalem is the eternal capital of an undivided Israel, and nothing will ever change that\u201d, he said, adding that \u201cas a general rule Israel does not define the capitals of other nations, so other countries should not do so for Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Capital city for 1000 years<\/strong><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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Israel\u2019s Foreign Ministry summoned the Australian ambassador and announced that Israel \u201cexpresses its deep disappointment\u201d over the decision, which it described as the result of \u201cshort-term political considerations,\u201d the Times of Israel reports.
\nPalestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh welcomed the \u201cwise and bold decision\u201d.
\nAustralia\u2019s Department of Foreign Affairs also eventually quietly deleted its recognition of East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital.
\nThe deletion came after media reported that the Foreign Office website continued to say that \u201cin December 2018, Australia recognized the aspirations of the Palestinian people for a future state with its capital in East Jerusalem.\u201d
\nDuring a meeting at the UN in October with then Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, former British PM Liz Truss said that she planned to move the country\u2019s embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The move prompted Roman Catholic Archbishop Vincent Nichols, who represents England and Wales, and Church of England Archbishop Justin Welby to protest the plans to move the British embassy to Jerusalem.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The historic capital of Israel<\/strong><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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At an Israel event in August, new British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak declared that Jerusalem is \u201cindisputably Israel\u2019s historic capital\u201d and that there were \u201cvery strong arguments\u201d for moving the British embassy from its current location in Tel Aviv.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s something I would like to do,\u201d he said, according to The Times of Israel.
\nKing David made Jerusalem the capital of Israel as early as 3000 years ago, which it remained for approximately 1000 years until year 70 when the Jews were expelled from the area and both the city, and the temple were destroyed by the Roman Empire. During the centuries that various empires subsequently dominated the area, Jerusalem was an inconspicuous city that never became the capital of any other country \u2013 while Jews in the Dispersion regularly prayed \u201cNext year in Jerusalem\u201d on holidays such as Pesach and Yom Kippur. At the end of the 19th century, Jerusalem had only about 20,000 inhabitants and was an insignificant and abandoned city in the Ottoman Empire.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Jewish presence<\/strong><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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Interest in Jerusalem was only seriously awakened in modern times when the Jewish people, after almost 2000 years in exile, began to return to the area. After the Arab countries rejected the UN partition plan and lost their war of aggression against the newly formed Jewish state in 1948, Jordan annexed East Jerusalem on April 24, 1950 \u2013 with no significant international protests \u2013 and at the same time expelled the Jewish population from the region.
\nAfter losing East Jerusalem to Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War, Jordan renounced all claims to the area in 1988, more than 20 years later.
\nThe Jerusalem Law, enacted by the Israeli parliament, Knesset, on July 30, 1980, which declared Jerusalem to be the eternal and undivided capital of Israel, led many countries to move their embassies from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Australia reverses Jerusalem decision In mid-October Australia reversed the decision to recognize West Jerusalem as Israel\u2019s capital, a decision made four years ago by then Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his government For a thousand years, Jerusalem was the capital of Israel and the center of the country\u2019s religious life. The Western Wall is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1693,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-did-you-know"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1696"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3637,"href":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1696\/revisions\/3637"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}