Among the many and varied diplomatic and security steps launched by Benjamin Netanyahu over his years as prime minister, encouraging foreign embassies to move to Jerusalem is in retrospect his biggest failure.
Not only did the diplomatic wave he hoped to create by the U.S. move of its embassy to Jerusalem not materialize, but instead, it sparked a broad counter wave. The attempt to challenge the UN resolution from the 1980s calling for foreign embassies to refrain from moving to Jerusalem turned into a diplomatic boomerang, which on Tuesday the Australian government joined with in its reversal of a previous decision to recognize West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
The campaign ran into a wall of harsh reaction back when former President Donald Trump launched it in May 2018. A controversial move by a controversial president, in the wake of which many Palestinians were killed and wounded, led to a series of condemnations by the international community including the UN Security Council.
The strong countries in the European Union at the time – Germany, the U.K. and France – immediately made it clear that they opposed the unilateral measure and that the borders and status of Jerusalem must be determined by negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Netanyahu at the time flirted with other EU countries – Hungary, Czech Republic, Romania and Slovakia – but in fact, more than four years later, no EU country completely broke with the consensus on the issue.
The first to predict the future was apparently the EU foreign affairs chief at the time, Federica Mogherini. Back at the end of 2017, she remarked with a big smile that Netanyahu “can keep his expectations for others, because this will not happen from EU countries.”
Last month, the campaign was suddenly conjured up when British Prime Minister Liz Truss told Prime Minister Yair Lapid that she was reviewing the idea of Britain’s move of its embassy to Jerusalem. But since then, Truss’s position has become shaky and no practical action was taken. In the test of reality, more than four years after the Israeli campaign to move the embassies to Jerusalem, only Guatemala, Honduras and Kosovo have joined the United States. Still, it should be noted that with all the criticism of Trump by the Democrats, the Biden administration has not overturned the decision.
One of the reasons for the global opposition – beyond resistance in principle to unilateral steps on conflict borders and the risk to the two-state solution, whose capitals are East Jerusalem and West Jerusalem – was the complete identification of the move with conservative right-wing leaders supported by evangelical Christians. The clearest example of this is of course, the United States. In August 2020, Trump admitted outright that the move of the embassy to Jerusalem was “for the evangelicals.”
But evangelical right-wing support for the move of the embassy to Jerusalem could also be seen in Guatemala, Honduras, Brazil, the Philippines and yes, on the other side of the world, in Australia. Former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, with whom Netanyahu discussed the matter at the time, is himself a staunch evangelical Christian.
Yet the internal political pressures were heavy, and eventually Morrison announced that Australia would recognize only West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and that the embassy would be moved to the city if and when an agreement was reached between Israel and the Palestinians.
On the face of it, the Australian compromise was a reasonable diplomatic solution. Recognition of West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital still allowed future recognition of East Jerusalem as a Palestinian capital. But when Morrison was defeated in May of this year and the left returned to power, the abrogation of all the previous government’s decisions included the one about Jerusalem. And thus also the total identification that Netanyahu created between the move and the evangelicals is what led to the anticipated response of the left in that country. And that’s not all; Australia is now also considering making good on a campaign promise to recognize a Palestinian state.
And so it’s interesting to see Prime Minister Yair Lapid adopting this failed campaign of Netanyahu’s. Not only did he encourage and welcome Truss’s statement, he responded to the Australian government’s decision yesterday by summoning the Australian ambassador in Israel for an urgent rebuke. The campaign to unilaterally recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital does not suit the vision of a leader who ceremoniously declared his support for the two-state solution in the United Nations. One may also guess that Lapid will oppose Australia’s symbolic recognition of a Palestinian state. But why, actually, if Lapid himself supports such a position? And even if we set aside the ideological consideration, in the utilitarian sense, it seems that the embassies campaign launched by Netanyahu and adopted by Lapid has so far been a double-edged sword.