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Australian Ambassador: We Wouldn't Use the Term "Occupied"

(Tablet) Yair Rosenberg - The Australian government caused a stir when it issued a statement declaring that it would no longer refer to east Jerusalem as "occupied east Jerusalem." Australia's Ambassador to Israel Dave Sharma explained: "Our position on this is that all the final status issues as identified by Oslo - and that includes the status of Jerusalem, borders, right of return - are all amenable only to political negotiations and a political solution. And so a third country taking positions on the legal merits of each party's plans, if you like, is not helpful and not constructive and ultimately not what's needed." "The term 'occupied east Jerusalem' implied a legal view of the respective claims of the parties and we didn't think it was helpful to be doing that." In other words, Australia's policy is to maintain neutrality and avoid prejudging the outcome of negotiations. It maintains a similar policy in other territorial conflicts like those over Western Sahara and East Timor. In January, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop came to Israel and suggested that the country's settlements might not be illegal under international law, and stated that she didn't want to "prejudge the fundamental issues in the peace negotiations." Sharma noted, "She didn't want to buy in to a characterization of the settlements being 'legal' or 'illegal'."
2014-06-13 00:00:00
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