The war in Gaza approaches its third month, with protests around the world ranging in calls from ceasefire to the outright destruction of Israel. At the UN, the United States and its former Pacific possessions Micronesia and Palau are its most reliable allies. This week, a country in that region went much further in cementing its ties with Israel.
“I am pleased to have had the honor of promoting the opening of the first consulate in Judea and Samaria,” Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen tweeted on Tuesday. “I thank the government of Papua New Guinea for the brave friendship and the welcome step. Judea and Samaria are the lands of our ancestors and I will always continue to work for the settlement.”
The announcement follows that country’s opening of its embassy in Jerusalem last September, joining the United States, Honduras, Kosovo, and Guatemala in recognizing it as Israel’s capital city.
“Today is a milestone moment for my country to give respect to the People of Israel to the fullest,” Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape said at the time. “It entrenches our relationship deeper and elevates our relationship higher. As Christians, paying respect to G-d would not be complete without recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.”
The consulate is expected to open in Ariel, the largest Jewish community in the Shomron. The warm relationship between Israel and Papua New Guinea is the result of evangelical missionaries whose faith united hundreds of the country’s ethnic and linguistic groups. As a former Australian territory its foreign policy aligns with other western nations, and the United States regards Papua New Guinea as an ally against Chinese ambitions in the Pacific Ocean.
Papua New Guinea established relations with Israel in 1978, three years after becoming independent. As a developing nation, it welcomes Israeli economic and humanitarian assistance. The country never had a Jewish community, although in past centuries European explorers and missionaries searching for the Lost Tribes of Israel tried to identify them among the island country’s natives. As they embraced the Christian faith, some of them, notably in the Gogodala community of southern Papua, began to think of themselves as descendants of Israelites.
The opening of a consulate inside an Israeli settlement could strain Papua New Guinea’s relations with Indonesia, its western neighbor and the world’s most populous Muslim nation. Israel occupies and controls much of the West Bank, as Judea and Samaria are known internationally, but it never annexed these territories. Most countries recognize this region as reserved for a future Palestinian state. By opening a consulate in Ariel, Papua New Guinea would appear to be more pro-Israel than the United States, which broke away from international consensus with its embassy move and recognition of the Golan Heights as Israeli land.
As previous countries that have established embassies in Jerusalem have shown, threats of isolation and violence have not materialized, and instead, such a gesture serves as an example of a country’s independent judgment of its interests and values.
By Sergey Kadinsky
