This article appears in the new issue of the Jerusalem Report, dated 8 March 2021
Israel has no doubt about the status of Jerusalem. As the State of Israel was established in May 1948, the city was declared to be its capital. The Jerusalem Law of 1980 asserts that East Jerusalem ‒ captured and annexed by Jordan in 1948, and recaptured by Israel in 1967 ‒ has been re-absorbed into a unified Jerusalem municipality that is once again the capital of the State of Israel.
Insofar
as the 1980 Law does not specify the boundaries of the Jerusalem municipality,
the United States is in agreement. When
Donald Trump as US president recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in
December 2017, and was roundly condemned by much of world opinion for doing so,
the words he uttered at the same time are rarely quoted.
“We are not taking a position on any final status issues,” said Trump, “including the specific boundaries of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem…Those questions are up to the parties involved.” Subsequently, when Trump finally unveiled his Israel-Palestine peace plan in February 2020, he explained that it envisages a Palestinian capital in eastern Jerusalem to be called Al Quds, where the US will “proudly” open an embassy.
In other words the UN holds
that the exact status of Jerusalem in international law is as yet
undetermined. Yet the Security Council, in its Resolution 2334
passed in 2016, had no doubts on the subject.
The status of Jerusalem and the West Bank, it determined, was at it had
been on 4 June 1967 ‒ that is, on the day before the Six Day War commenced ‒ referring
three times to “Palestinian territories including East
Jerusalem.”
So the UN asserts that Jerusalem’s
status is yet to be resolved and in the same breath that East Jerusalem is
Palestinian territory. It does not
acknowledge that on 4 June 1967 West Jerusalem was Israel’s capital. Even less understandably, it ignores the fact
that Jordan, having conquered the West Bank and East Jerusalem in its attack on
Israel in 1948, proceeded to annex them in a move not recognized by the UN or
any other international body, nor by any countries except the UK and
Pakistan. When Israel recaptured them in
1967, logic suggests that their true status was that they were being held
illegally by Jordan and, in international law, were the sovereign territory of
no nation. The UN, however, maintains
that they were Palestinian territory.
Even
before Trump in December 2017 formally recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s
capital, Salva Kir, president of the newly independent state of South Sudan, told
a visiting Israeli delegation in August 2011 that he planned to locate his
embassy in Jerusalem. Later that year Kir
visited Israel to express his gratitude for its support during the civil war. At
a meeting with Israel’s then-president, Shimon Peres, he reiterated his
intention. That wish has not yet proved father to the deed.
It was in July 2016 that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, undertook an historic tour of east Africa. Some of the fruits of his journey became apparent in May 2018, when no less than twelve African heads of state attended the ceremony relocating the US embassy to Jerusalem. Since then reports, some of them solidly based, others rather less substantiated, have been swirling around the media naming one African state after another as being on the verge of following the US’s example.
In
February 2020 Uganda was reported as “mulling” its intention to do so. In September attention had turned to
Malawi. By November it was Rwanda. On February 19, 2021 Equatorial Guinea
announced its intention to relocate its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
The
rumours were far from confined to African states. Central and South American nations also
featured. In April 2018 Brazil was in
the spotlight, together with Guatemala ‒ and then, for once, the whisper became
reality. On May 16, 2018 ‒ two days
after the US formally relocated its embassy to Jerusalem ‒ Guatemala followed
suit. Later that month media rumour was
focused on Paraguay and Honduras. In
December it was the Dominican Republic.
December 2018 also saw a major news story featuring Australia’s new prime minister Scott Morrison, who went on the record announcing that Australia would consider following the US and move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He said it may be possible for his nation both to support a two-state solution and also recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital ‒ something that Australia had "to date assumed" was unfeasible. His statement drew a tweeted response of approval from Netanyahu. So Australia joined the ever-growing list of nations with this embassy issue simmering on its back-burner.
European
nations were not spared by the headline-seeking media machine. Shortly after Trump’s announcement, the
Czechs declared that they viewed Jerusalem as the “capital of the State of
Israel, in its 1967 borders”. In other
words, they rejected the UN’s equivocation but restricted their recognition to West Jerusalem. In April 2018 the Czech ministry of foreign
affairs announced that the Czech government intended to open an honorary
consulate and a new Czech Center in West Jerusalem. Relocating its embassy from Tel Aviv would
seem the next logical step in the Czech Republic’s leisurely journey.
At about this same time, sections of
the government in Romania were reported to be in favour of moving the Romanian
embassy to Jerusalem. Next in the frame
were Serbia and Kosovo, and in this instance substance followed rumor.
It was on September 4, 2020 in the White House that Serbia and Kosovo signed a US-brokered agreement, counter-signed by Donald Trump, to normalize economic relations between them. The agreement went wider. It included plans for Israel and Kosovo to establish diplomatic relations between each other, and for Serbia to move its Israeli embassy to Jerusalem.
“After a violent and
tragic history and years of failed negotiations,” said Trump “my administration
proposed a new way of bridging the divide…By focusing on job creation and
economic growth, the two countries were able to reach a major breakthrough.”
In February 1998 Kosovo.
a Muslim province of the old Yugoslavia, attempted to break free from Serbia
and Montenegro. The dispute soon
degenerated into armed conflict. It was
a particularly brutal struggle, into which NATO finally intervened to protect
Kosovan civilians. The war ended with a
treaty under which Yugoslav and Serb forces withdrew to make way for an
international presence. Kosovo declared
itself an independent state in 2008, but Serbia refused to recognize it, and in
fact continues to regard Kosovo as a province of Serbia.
Serbia’s President
Aleksandar Vucic and Kosovo’s Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti both considered the White
House agreement a significant development. “Of course,” said Vucic,
“as regards the politics we haven’t resolved our problems. There are still a
lot of differences between us, but this is a huge step forward.”
The White House deal
also set the seal on mutual recognition between Kosovo and Israel, and as part
of the arrangement Kosovo promised to open an embassy in Jerusalem, and Serbia undertook
to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, both by the summer of 2021.
On 1 February 2021, in
a ceremony held over Zoom in Jerusalem and Pristina, Israel and Kosovo formally
established diplomatic ties. By doing so
Kosovo became the first Muslim-majority country to recognize Jerusalem as the
capital of Israel. If the full terms of
the White House deal are met, Kosovo will be the first Muslim country to have a
Jerusalem-based embassy, and only the third nation after the US and Guatemala
to have one. Serbia will be the first
European country to open an embassy in Israel’s capital.
Meanwhile UN Secretary
General Antonio Guterres finds himself in something of a bind. He cannot but welcome the recent agreement
between Serbia and Kosovo, and the establishment of diplomatic relations
between Kosovo and Israel, yet the decision of Serbia and Kosovo to site their
embassies in Jerusalem is a direct violation of UN Resolution 478 which advised
all nations to withdraw their embassies from the city.
The press briefing conducted on September 14, 2020 by Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for the Secretary-General, illustrates the embarrassing dilemma.
Asked how the Secretary General views moving embassies to Jerusalem in the context of moves towards peace, Dujarric welcomed countries recognizing and establishing relations with each other, while the location of its embassy was a decision for individual states. As for the status of Jerusalem, he repeated the well-worn mantra that it was an issue to be decided by the parties. This did not satisfy the media corps, one of whom pointed out that siting an embassy in Jerusalem was in direct violation of Resolution 478, but Dujarric refused to be drawn
The embassy barrier
imposed by the UN is obviously breaking down.
Sooner or later other nations who have indicated an interest in
re-siting their embassies in Israel’s capital will act. One determining factor may well be the strong
bi-partisan support evidenced in the US against reversing Trump’s embassy
move. On February 4, 2021 the US Senate
voted 97-3 in favour of keeping the US embassy in Jerusalem. That this was
the position of the incoming Biden administration was confirmed by the new US
Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, during his Senate confirmation hearing,
when he also said that the US would continue to recognize Jerusalem as the
capital of Israel.
The rumor mill has been
busy on this issue. Over the past few
years at least fourteen nations have been identified in the media as possible
candidates for locating, or re-locating, their embassies to Jerusalem. Some are merely the subject of a whisper; others
have indicated a firm intention of doing so, but have not yet matched their
intention with action. The record shows
that the names in the frame are: South
Sudan, Brazil, Moldova, Romania, Paraguay, Honduras, the Czech Republic,
Uganda, Serbia, Malawi, Rwanda, the Dominican Republic, Equatorial Guinea and
last, but by no means least, Australia.
The potential field is, of course, far larger. Israel enjoys diplomatic relations with more than 160 countries, virtually all of which have sited their embassies in Tel Aviv or neighbouring cities. A wholesale relocation of these foreign embassies is unlikely ‒ unless or until a Biden-inspired peace negotiation finally determines the extent of Israeli sovereignty in what is now the Jerusalem municipality. Once the position is clear, accepted by all concerned and endorsed by international opinion, everything else will follow.
Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line, 24 February 2021:https://www.jpost.com/jerusalem-report/jerusalem-and-the-embassy-issue-660051
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