Government works to downplay importance of changed language on East Jerusalem

DISASTER with a capital D. A single capital O could have a major impact on Australia’s reputation in the Middle East.

The Sahiwal Express is loaded with Northern Territory cattle at Darwin's East Arm Wharf, as the live cattle trade restarts with Indonesia.

WORDS are the weapons of diplomacy, and even the tiniest change in language can be seen as a hostile barrage, as the Australian Government is discovering.

And the controversy is starting to look like a shambles. That’s with both a capital S and a lower case S.

Two weeks ago the Government said it would no longer refer to East Jerusalem, captured by Israel in the Six-Day War of June, 1967 as “Occupied East Jerusalem”.

In November, 1967 the UN Security Council used the term “occupied” and it has been the accepted description of the territory ever since, although there has been use of the word “disputed” as well.

A bitter reaction to its decision has forced the Government to downplay its importance to the extent that there now is a dizzying debate over whether “small o” occupied is just the same as “capital O” Occupied.

There have been attempts to placate angry members of the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation — some of them our best Middle East trading partners — who are threatening to stop buying our farm products.

This is a timetable of the issue.

• June 5 Attorney General George Brandis to Senate committee: “The description of East Jerusalem as ‘Occupied East Jerusalem’ is a term freighted with pejorative implications, which is neither appropriate nor useful.”

• June 6 Attorney General George Brandis in written statement: “The description of East Jerusalem as ‘Occupied Jerusalem’ is pejorative and it will not be the practice of the Australian Government to describe areas of negotiation in such judgmental language.”

• June 13 Amid threats of trade retaliation by Arab nations, National Farmers Federation president Brent Finlay said “We are very concerned about it and we are working closely with Agriculture Minister (Barnaby Joyce). It is an unfortunate hiccup.”

• June 13 Agricultures Minister Barnaby Joyce: “I acknowledge that this is a contentious discussion in the Middle East, and I just want to make sure that on our behalf that we continue to do what is I believe a noble pursuit, the provision of food, the provision of protein for the sustenance of people, and in the same breath making sure we get a better return back through the farm gate for Australian farming families.”

• June 14 Prime Minister Tony Abbott in Houston, Texas: “There has been no change in policy. There’s been a terminological clarification.”

Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop are having to chose language carefully after the Government said it would no longer refer to “Occupied East Jerusalem”.

• June 16 Letter from Foreign Minister Julie Bishop to ambassadors from Islamic nations: “I emphasise there has been no change in the Australian government’s position on the legal status of the Palestinian Territories, including East Jerusalem. Our position is consistent with relevant UN resolutions on the issue starting with UN security council resolution 242 and 338. Senator Brandis’s statement was about nomenclature, and was not a comment on the legal status of the Palestinian Territories.”

• June 19 Spokesman for Opposition Leader Bill Shorten: “The territory is occupied, and that’s why Labor describes it like that.”

• June 19 Head of the Palestinian delegation to Australia, Izzat Abdulhadi, one of 18 ambassadors who met Foreign Minister Julie Bishop: “[Ms Bishop] said that Senator Brandis ... said Australian Government will not use the language of occupied with a capital ‘O’, as if it’s a part of the name, but the Government will continue to use occupied East Jerusalem with a small ‘o’.”

Well I guess that settles it then.

Originally published as Government works to downplay importance of changed language on East Jerusalem