Israel criticises Labor’s decision to drop recognition of West Jerusalem as capital

Israeli prime minister, Yair Lapid, has criticised Labor’s decision to drop the recognition of West Jerusalem as that country’s capital and Australia’s ambassador has been summoned to explain.

Lapid has accused the Australian government of a “hasty” foreign policy shift, after it reversed the previous government’s decision.

The Israeli foreign ministry also revealed that it would summon the Australian ambassador to a meeting to register its “deep disappointment in the face of the Australian government’s decision resulting from short-sighted political considerations”.

Penny Wong confirmed earlier on Tuesday that Australia was reversing the previous government’s decision to recognise West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

The foreign affairs minister said the final status of the capital should not be determined until peace negotiations with the Palestinian people were finalised.

“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,” Wong said.

Tuesday’s announcement came a day after Guardian Australia revealed that a department deleted a public statement recognising West Jerusalem as the capital.

At first the government denied it had changed the policy, because ministers were yet to sign off on the decision. Wong confirmed cabinet had agreed to the change on Tuesday morning.

The prime minister of Israel, Yair Lapid, criticised the government’s handling of the decision.

“In light of the way this decision was made in Australia, as a hasty response to an incorrect report in the media, we can only hope that the Australian government manages other matters more seriously and professionally,” Lapid said.

“Jerusalem is the eternal and united capital of Israel and nothing will ever change that.”

Wong said Australia would “always be a steadfast friend of Israel” but the previous government’s policy shift in 2018 was a “cynical play, unsuccessful, to win the seat of Wentworth in a byelection”.

She said the former prime minister Scott Morrison had attempted to play politics with foreign policy “in order to win votes in the seat”.

“For that reason, I made clear at the time, we reaffirmed our view that Jerusalem is a final-status issue. What do those words mean? It means that has to be resolved through negotiation between the parties.”

She said the update to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s website “occurred ahead of government processes; that happens sometimes”.

Wong declined to say whether the government had received any representations from Israel against proceeding with the change, saying it would not be reasonable “to disclose all of the interactions I and my office might have with stakeholders”.

Like most countries, Australia has maintained an embassy in Tel Aviv.

In the past few days, Dfat deleted from its website a passage that said “in December 2018, Australia recognised West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, being the seat of the Knesset and many of the institutions of the Israeli government”.

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A second deleted sentence read: “Australia looks forward to moving its embassy to West Jerusalem when practical, in support of, and after the final status determination of, a two-state solution.”

The Coalition had earlier questioned why the language “was silently altered on the Dfat website”.

The Coalition’s foreign affairs spokesperson, Simon Birmingham, said: “Why does Labor keep changing policy on Israel without any announcement or ministerial explanation?”

Morrison said through a spokesperson: “Labor’s decision in relation to the capital of Israel is disappointing and represents a further diminution in Australia’s support for the State of Israel by the Labor government from the high-water mark established by the Morrison government.”

But Wong said on Tuesday that Australia was “among the first countries to formally recognise Israel under Labor prime minister Ben Chifley”.

“This government will not waver in its support of Israel and the Jewish community in Australia,” she said.

“We are equally unwavering supporters of the Palestinian people, providing humanitarian support every year since 1951 and advocating for resumed peace negotiations.”

The head of the general delegation of Palestine to Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific, Izzat Abdulhadi, said the change in language was “welcomed and an important step in the right direction towards meaningful implementation of the two state solution”.

He urged the Labor party to explicitly recognise “the right of the Palestinian people to self determination, as a right by internationally Law, in a vibrant independent and sovereign Palestinian State on 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital”.

The executive director of the Australian Centre for International Justice, Rawan Arraf, called on the Australian government to “do more”, including by rescinding its objection to an international criminal court investigation into allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Morrison altered Australia’s policy after the then US president Donald Trump directed the state department to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. In 2017 Trump “determined that it is time to officially recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel”.

The following year, in the final week of the Wentworth byelection campaign, Morrison declared that he was “open-minded” about following the US move and promised an Australian government review.

Later the Morrison government settled on a fallback policy to recognise West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital but not to move the Australian embassy there until after a peace agreement.

On 15 December 2018, Wong promised that a Labor government would reverse Morrison’s decision, saying the policy was “all risk and no gain”:

Despite the recent deletion of language about West Jerusalem and the Australian embassy, Dfat’s Israel country brief still retains much of its original content.

The old and new versions both say Australia is “strongly opposed to unfair targeting of Israel in the United Nations and other multilateral institutions”.