{"id":106187,"date":"2023-08-09T17:05:17","date_gmt":"2023-08-09T15:05:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=106187"},"modified":"2023-08-09T08:11:10","modified_gmt":"2023-08-09T06:11:10","slug":"16-05-89","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=106187","title":{"rendered":"Australia will refer to West Bank as \u2018occupied Palestinian territories’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>Australia will refer to West Bank as \u2018occupied Palestinian territories’-<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

LAHAV HARKOV<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Australia stopped referring to the West Bank as occupied in 2014, now they plan to revert to this terminology.<\/strong>
\n.<\/h5>\n

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese<\/em><\/span>
\n(photo credit: LUKAS COCH\/REUTERS<\/em>)<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The Australian government once again considers\u00a0Israeli settlements in the West Bank<\/a>\u00a0to be in violation of international law, and will return to using the term \u201coccupied Palestinian territories,\u201d Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong told parliament on Tuesday.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Australian government is strengthening its opposition to settlements by affirming they are illegal under international law and a significant obstacle to peace,\u201d Wong said. \u201cIn adopting the term, we are clarifying that the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and Gaza, were occupied by Israel following the 1967 War, and that the occupation continues.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Still, Wong said, Australia would remain a \u201ccommitted friend of Israel.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The change \u201creflects legal advice and UN Security Council resolutions\u201d and will have Australia use the same language as the UK, New Zealand, and Europe, Wong pointed out. It comes after Canberra issued a statement last month saying that they were \u201cdeeply concerned\u201d by the advancement of settlement plans, which they argued reduced \u201cthe prospects for peace\u201d but did not say were illegal.<\/span><\/p>\n

Australian ministers refrained from using the terms \u201coccupied\u201d or \u201coccupation\u201d in relation to the West Bank since 2014. Before that, the terms were used inconsistently, according to a report from the Australian Broadcast Corporation.<\/span><\/p>\n

Penny Wong (credit: CHALINEE THIRASUPA\/REUTERS)<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Wong belongs to the Labor Party, which passed a resolution in June calling on Australia to \u201crecognize Palestine as a state.\u201d The party is holding another major conference next week.<\/span><\/p>\n

Liberal MP Julian Lesser, who is Jewish, noted the timing of the conference to the ABC, saying \u201cthat Australian foreign policy is subject, while this government is in power, to the whim of the faction bosses within the Labor movement who are controlling their national conference.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis decision will not help a two-state solution on the ground, it will only embolden and please…\u00a0terrorist organizations, like Palestinian Islamic Jihad<\/a>,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Shadow Foreign Minister Simon Birmingham told the ABC that it is \u201cextremely regrettable that Labor\u2019s internal differences are undermining the consistency of Australia\u2019s position on these matters.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Responses of local Jewish organizations to the decision<\/strong><\/h5>\n

The Zionist Federation of Australia and the Executive Council of Australian Jewry said they are \u201cdeeply concerned\u201d by the decision.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cCanberra was only made the capital of Australia in 1913, when the city had to be built from scratch, whereas Jerusalem has been the capital of the Jewish people for over 3,000 years.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n

Arsen Ostrovsky<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/div>\n

The organizations\u2019 respective presidents Jeremy Leibler and Jillian Segal called the change \u201cinaccurate, ahistorical, and counterproductive.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDescribing East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza as \u2018occupied Palestinian territories\u2019 effectively denies any Jewish claim to the West Bank and Jerusalem. The most important Jewish holy sites of the Temple Mount and the Western Wall are in East Jerusalem, and there has been an unbroken Jewish presence in the West Bank for thousands of years,\u201d they said. \u201cIsraelis and Palestinians have agreed to negotiate the division of the West Bank between them. Describing the territories as \u2018Palestinian\u2019 not only preempts the outcome of negotiations but is counterproductive.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Segal and Leibler also argued that \u201cthe announcement will be used by Israeli and Palestinian hardliners to bolster support within their respective constituencies and put a peace agreement further out of reach.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

International Legal Forum CEO Arsen Ostrovsky called the decision \u201chighly flawed and one-sided,\u201d as well as \u201ccontrary to established principles of international law.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDespite highly biased political proclamations in some international arenas, such as the United Nations, the status of Judea and Samaria, which form a central and indisputable part of Jewish history, are subject to final status negotiations and to which Israel has a legitimate legal right,\u201d Ostrovsky said.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cFor the record,\u201d he added, \u201cCanberra was only made the capital of Australia in 1913, when the city had to be built from scratch, whereas Jerusalem has been the capital of the Jewish people for over 3,000 years.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Ostrovsky also noted that Australia plans to deem Gaza occupied, even though Israel evacuated Gaza in 2005.<\/span><\/p>\n

Last year, the Australian Foreign Ministry reversed a 2018 policy to recognize western Jerusalem as Israel\u2019s capital, while it \u201cacknowledged the aspirations of the Palestinian people for a future state with its capital in East Jerusalem.\u201d The reversal took place on\u00a0the holiday of Simchat Torah<\/a>, further upsetting Australian Jewish organizations that opposed the change.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Australia will refer to West Bank as \u2018occupied Palestinian territories’- LAHAV HARKOV Australia stopped referring to the West Bank as occupied in 2014, now they plan to revert to this terminology. . Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (photo credit: LUKAS COCH\/REUTERS) The Australian government once again considers\u00a0Israeli settlements in the West Bank\u00a0to be in violation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106187"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=106187"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":106205,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106187\/revisions\/106205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=106187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=106187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=106187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}