Trump’s support for a two-state solution is being ignored

Illustration: Eric Lobbecke

“Death to America!” “Open the gates of hell!” The international community has issued a calm, measured and diplomatic response to the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital city. Consistent with their obligations under international law, Islamists have refrained from political violence, and inciting race hatred and genocide.

The UN and EU have responded to outbreaks of jihadi violence by affirming Israel’s right to self-­determination and praising the only liberal democracy in the Middle East. One can dream.

In a world set against Israel, it is unfashionable to counter propaganda with basic facts. US President Donald Trump recognised a historical fact and political reality by stating that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. While Trump might have specified Jerusalem west of the 1967 line, the omission could only be viewed as an invitation to violence by those eager to damn Trump or shed Jewish blood.

The head of Hamas, Ismail Haniya, used America’s recognition of Israeli sovereignty to call for an intifada. The President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said the region had been thrown into “a ring of fire”.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, waxed poetic in a grand conspiracy: “The modern day pharaoh is represented by the US, the Zionist regime and their accomplices.” Islamist groups from Iran, Iraq, Lebanon and Africa incited jihad.

And Desmond Tutu caught a glimpse of divine omniscience: “God is weeping over President Donald Trump’s inflammatory and discriminatory recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.”

A special meeting of the UN Security Council was convened to discuss Trump’s Jerusalem statement. Despite the US representative reiterating that the President took no position on the boundaries of Jerusalem and expected Israel and Palestinians to resolve such matters, UN members rushed to denounce him.

UN discussions on Israel and the West often encourage blame-shifting. It is common for UN members to blame Israel and the West for Islamist violence. The blame-shifting game is common in the media also.

After militants fired into Israel from Hamas-governed Gaza, Fairfax ran the headline “Israeli planes hit Gaza Strip as Donald Trump-driven violence ramps up”.

Trump doesn’t govern Hamas. The headline might have read ­“Israel responds to militants as Hamas-driven violence ramps up.”

The global media outrage about Trump’s Jerusalem statement is fake news. Rather than address the substance of his statement, media pundits are engorging themselves on apocalyptic conspiracies featuring all the usual stereotypes about Jewish fin­ance and Zionist intrigue.

The truth is plainer and more interesting.

In 1995, the US congress adopted the Jerusalem Embassy Act with bipartisan support, urging both recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and relocation of the US embassy to Jerusalem. It defined Jerusalem as an “undivided city in which the rights of every ethnic and religious group are protected.”

This year, the Senate re­affirmed the act by a unanimous vote. Trump has chosen to act where his predecessors failed to deliver. However, the rationale for recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is more than a mere technicality.

Trump argues the case by appeal to national sovereignty. He believes that like every other sovereign nation, Israel should be allowed to decide its own capital. In The Atlantic, analyst Einat Wilf prosecuted the argument that Israel’s capital in Jerusalem is west of the 1967 line.

The relocation of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is pragmatic and legal. Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, is located in Jerusalem. Trump is following the standard international practice of having parliaments and foreign embassies located in the same city.

Much of the global media has chosen to misrepresent the most important part of Trump’s Jerusalem statement where he calls for peace and the two-state solution. Since it has been so widely misreported, it is useful to consider a direct quote from the relevant section: “I want to make one point very clear: this decision is not intended, in any way, to reflect a ­departure from our strong commitment to facilitate a lasting peace agreement. We want an agree­ment that is a great deal for the Israelis and a great deal for the Palestinians. We are not taking a position of any final status issues, including the specific boundaries of the Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem, or the resolution of contested borders. Those questions are up to the parties involved.”

The UN, the EU, the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation and key Islamist regimes are choosing to ignore Trump’s emphatic support for the two-state solution. His insistence that the status quo be maintained at Jerusalem’s holy sites has been drowned out by the international community’s confected outrage.

In the place of truth, leading ­Islamists are peddling lies by omission that foster a climate of hostility towards the US and ­Israel. EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini courted irony by echoing key points of Trump’s Jerusalem statement before lamenting its “potential to send us backwards to even darker times than the ones we’re already living in”. Mogherini’s judgment on Islamism is flawed. In 2015, she stated that “political Islam” should be part of Europe’s future.

Supranational organisations are becoming less trustworthy as they develop ideologically polarised positions and a pronounced hostility towards democracies that dissent from their world view. The EU and UN have a common legacy of systematic bias against conservative politicians who defend Western values, such as Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Victoria’s state Liberal leader Matthew Guy has lent support to the US position on Jerusalem in contrast to Foreign Minister Julie Bishop.

Although Bishop couched her criticism in fairly mild terms, it is difficult to deduce why the ­Coalition government would object to Trump’s Jerusalem statement. He has affirmed the status quo on the two-state solution between Israel and Palestine and urged protection of Jerusalem’s holy sites.

As a liberal democracy, Israel is better equipped to protect the diversity of faiths in Jerusalem than neighbouring Islamist regimes or the UN’s illiberal member states. Political leaders should turn down the volume on Islamist outrage, turn off the fake news and foster instead a steadfast commitment to the elusive two-state solution.