Protest US moves on Palestine
By Jennifer Thompson
SYDNEY — The Committee for Safeguarding Jerusalem had its first public action here on July 11, with a hundred-strong protest in front of the US consulate.
The demonstrators — members of the Australian-Arab community and supporters of the Palestinian struggle — want the US Congress to reverse its decision to recognise Jerusalem as the "eternal" capital of Israel and allocate $100 million to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
East Jerusalem, along with the West Bank and Gaza Strip, was occupied by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War, and illegally annexed.
The status of the city is supposed to be determined by the final status talks agreed in the Oslo peace accords signed in 1993. The US and Russia also signed the agreement as the sponsors of the negotiations timetable laid out in the Oslo accord.
The US decision contravenes the United Nations Security Council and 1991 Madrid Middle East peace conference position on the status of Jerusalem and makes a mockery of the "peace process".
Since the 1993 agreement, and particularly since last year's election of a Likud government, Israel has worked to change the demographics of large sections of the occupied West Bank, primarily East Jerusalem and its surrounds, with frenetic settlement-building activity.
The Committee for Safeguarding Jerusalem is urging the international community and human rights groups to intervene immediately against this resolution, which is "humiliating and unjust to the peace process and the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people to establish an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital".
The committee can be contacted by writing to PO Box 44, Punchbowl NSW 2196.