 If you're anyway invested in knowing about what's going on in Israel and its conflict with its Palestinian neighbors then you probably saw the recent newsflash that Australia decided to walk back on its recognition of West Jerusalem. But what is West Jerusalem? Why should anybody care about recognizing it? And what does it mean now that Australia doesn't recognize Israel's legitimacy there? I thought I'd put together this explainer video to try to provide some clarity. By the way, lest you weren't to wear everything involved in Israel and politics is insanely complicated and divisive. There's a saying popular in the Jewish world that if you ask two Jews something you'll get three opinions. And that's not even counting the Palestinians, the UN, the international community and the extraterrestrial lifeforms who may or may not exist. But if they did, I reckon they'd probably have an opinion about the conflict here. Therefore, if you feel like I've misrepresented any of the issues here, don't be shy about leaving me a comment. Just keep the discussion civil and we'll all have a fun, hearty debate. So firstly, what is Jerusalem? Jerusalem is one of the oldest cities in the world with civilization dating back to 3000 or 2800 BCE. That's a long ago that even dial-up internet hadn't been invented. It's also sort of the epicenter of the conflict between Israel, the Palestinians and more broadly, the Arab world surrounding it. Both Israel and the Palestinians claim Jerusalem as their capital, which kind of creates a bit of a problem. If you were to visit me in Jerusalem tomorrow, then you probably would be wondering what all the fuss is about east and west Jerusalem. That's because modern day Jerusalem effectively functions as one city. That's in spite of the fact that yes, there are different bus companies, different hospital networks, and many Jews and Arabs living in the city don't really see eye to eye on much at all. Except maybe that hummus is totally awesome. Anyway, this wasn't always the case. Between 1948 and 1967, there was an international border running through the city. Technically it was intended as an armistice line, which is sort of like a line that maps out where each side in a conflict that are trying to kill one another agrees to stop advancing its troops. Hence there were actually two lines running through the city and a no man's land running between them, but that's detailed for another video. During this period, Jordan controlled the territory to the east of the border slash armistice line and Israel controlled the territory to the west. This border running through Jerusalem was effectively the part of the green line that ran through the city. The green line is also known as the 1949 armistice border because it was agreed upon in the 1949 armistice agreements. So between 1948 and 1967, which was a 19 year period, Jerusalem was kind of like the way Nicosia and Cyprus functions today. There was a border running through it and unless you were a UN staffer or a non-who-lost-your-teeth which is a cool story, you couldn't really cross between the two parts. When people hear that Australia endorsed Israeli sovereignty over West Jerusalem before rather quickly retracting it, they are surprised to learn that the issue was even controversial in the first place. Even if you're on the right wing in Israel, you're probably aware that the international community, by which I mean the majority of the world's nations, aren't exactly kosher with Israel's current position of asserting sovereignty over the whole of the city and indeed any territory beyond the green line. And that gets us to the whole issue of east and west Jerusalem. In 1967, Israel captured east Jerusalem. Unfortunately, it's pretty much impossible to describe that action without causing offense to one side of the conflict or another. In the Israeli narrative, the Israeli army was unifying a city that had been unjustly split in half due to its illegal annexation by Jordan. In the Palestinian narrative, and that shared by many members of the international community, Israel annexed or occupied the territory. The reason that the term east Jerusalem is still highly relevant and parts of the political debate today has to do with the fact that the international community viewed Israel as capturing this territory, including the old city, as an illegitimate act. For that reason, they view Israel's decision to include east Jerusalem within the city boundary of Jerusalem, which is the territory within the boundaries of the Jerusalem municipality, as illegitimate. And they view the current situation by which Israel exerts control over the entire city as unjust and legal. But even that doesn't do the situation justice or explain why Australia's move generated controversy. The international community recognized that the status of Jerusalem was one of the thorniest issues in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. While events weren't folding the ground, the international community was busy pondering exactly how to bring some kind of harmony given that two different groups of people, namely Israel and the Palestinians, wanted the same tiny piece of land as their national capital. The position of most world countries with regard to Jerusalem can be compared to that of children caught up in a messy divorce or a mutual friend watching two friends bicker and feud. One of the ideas floated by the international community was something called the corpus separatum. That's a weird Latin word that means separated body. The idea here was that rather than try to figure out how to get the two sides to agree on anything about Jerusalem, the international community would take control over Jerusalem and implement some kind of peacekeeping agreement. UN resolution 181 called for the establishment of this patchwork Confederacy demanding that Jerusalem be governed under a special international regime to be administered by the United Nations. The problem was that pretty much nobody had any interest in this wacky proposal. Israel flatly rejected it and Jordan made clear that it only viewed the border through Jerusalem as a sort of temporary line and left no doubts that its ultimate objective was to push for control of the entire city and some people would say to obliterate Israel. The idea of the corpus separatum however lives on in modern diplomacy. It's kind of like some arcane law that you expect everybody's forgotten about and which nobody actually bothers obeying but which apparently everyone still remembers. My personal opinion is that the plan is pretty much nonsensical. A vacuum of trust and good will exist between both Israel the Palestinians and the international community. Also neither Israel nor the Palestinians are going to hand over control over a territory that includes some of the holiest sites in their religions to the United Nations. It's just not going to happen but again it exists on the statute books. So let's jump back to the weird situation that we find ourselves in grappling with Jerusalem today. In 1949 Israel took control over what was previously Jordanian East Jerusalem and brought almost all of it within its municipal borders. Practically speaking many of those Arab neighborhoods places like Jabal Mukhaber or Sorbacher and there's a lot of them that were integrated into a unified Jerusalem identify almost exclusively with the Palestinian cause. If you enter them dressed as a visible Jew you might get stones thrown at you or worse. The language on the street is Arabic. You'll see Palestinian flags hanging from every lamppost but technically speaking Israel considers them part of Jerusalem. To make matters even weirder and less sensical there are even some parts of Jerusalem that actually lie beyond the security barrier which Israel constructed to prevent the entrance of terrorists from the West Bank and stop them blowing up places in Jerusalem. The current manner in which the city operates makes barely any sense in my opinion. To go back to my analogy of a messy divorce is kind of like a couple living through an acrimonial divorce while still living together under the same room but it's not a lot of fun. Hence in Jerusalem there is an ongoing stream of nationalistically motivated attacks including lone wolf attacks by Palestinian militants against Israelis and Israel security forces. Palestinians for their part complain of being treated as second class citizens subjugated to the whims of a municipality whom they regard as illegitimate. It's the same municipality that they say refuses to grant them adequate permits to build houses but then sends out demolition crews to tear down those houses they build just because like everyone else they need places to live. Now let's get back to the present. In recent years some world governments have decided to recognize that this messy and ingrained conflict doesn't show any signs of stopping. While virtually nobody recognizes Israel's sovereignty over East Jerusalem meaning the part of the city to the east of the green armistice line a few countries have been bold enough to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the west of the city. International law is a pretty strange system. While I don't claim to be an expert in it I did take an entire college semester of it back in the days of my youth. Recognition of the legitimacy of a country's claim to a territory depends largely upon what other world governments have to say about the matter. It's kind of like walking to a bar finding an empty stool and taking a seat on it. If no one fights you for the seat or claims that you took their seat it sort of becomes officially yours through a process of consensus. Naturally I am simplifying even according to my simplistic understanding of the system. For the majority of the period that has elapsed since 1967 Israel has pretty much been getting the silent treatment or worse from the international community and the world governments whom it comprises. Countries have based their embassies in Tel Aviv or anywhere else in Israel besides Jerusalem because basing an embassy or consulate even in west Jerusalem is sort of a low key endorsement of Israel's sovereignty there. And the official party line remains that the status of the entire city needs to be resolved bilaterally between the two sides of the conflict. To make matters even more confusing one may notice that there are in fact consulates in Jerusalem. The catch is that these aren't actually consulates to Israel. They are effectively missions to the Palestinian authority or Jerusalem itself such as the mission of the Holy See the Vatican. In other words they are in charge of relations with the PA even though they are physically based in Jerusalem and yes this situation also makes very little sense. In recent years of course this delicate status quo has been tested. Most famously the United States under the ambassadorship of David Friedman moved its embassy to Jerusalem thereby endorsing Israeli sovereignty over the whole of the city. A couple of small countries have acted similarly. For one Kosovo maintains an embassy in the city Guatemala opened one but is talked about moving it back. Honestly even for fan of politics it's pretty hard to keep track of all the policy changes. Besides moving embassies another thing the countries can do to sort of gradually endorse the current situation is to recognize Israeli sovereignty over just the west of the city which again is the part of the city located to the west of the green line which many people assume incorrectly would be totally uncontroversial. These countries haven't opened embassies or consulates there but they signal that they're kosher with Israel's arrangement of administering the small parcel of land and claiming it as its capital. Under the weird system of international law such a recognition can take one of two forms. The jury recognition which means by law is the more heavyweight form of recognition whereas de facto which means in fact is kind of a lesser form of recognition which sort of says well these are the facts in the ground and retrospectively we're going to endorse that. The stream of countries who have made this bold move with regard to west Jerusalem thereby departing from the international community's whole idea placing the entire city under some sort of UN peacekeeping regime the corpus separatum we discussed earlier is actually pretty small but it included Australia and it now no longer includes Australia unless that change since I started recording this video which is a very distinct possibility. So that was kind of a long explanation but as I hope this video has made clear pretty much every facet of this insanely messy and complicated conflict is fraught with complication. For a while there was talk of the Palestinians making Aboudis their capital which is a town just to the east of Jerusalem but that idea was also a flat failure because the Palestinians are insistent on having control over parts of the actual city itself. At present Israel prevents the Palestinian authority by its laws from operating in the city and it maintains its role as the administrator and sovereign body over the east of the city even though the vast majority of people living there don't want anything to do with it and by the way those Palestinians living in east Jerusalem typically hold permanent residency passes to Israel green cards and aren't full citizens. This is typically by evolution they don't want to take the citizenship of a country they see as occupying their homeland. There is a process by which residents of east Jerusalem can take Israeli citizenship voluntarily but as you might imagine take up has been modest. Thanks for watching this messy explanation to the end having talked about bar squabbles I'm now off to drink a pint of beer hopefully without anyone telling me that I'm taking their seat at the bar. If you'd like to see more of these videos consider subscribing liking and sharing this video with your friends families and networks