The Australian government has insisted it still regards the Golan Heights as occupied territory after Penny Wong described the site of a weekend attack as a “northern Israeli town”.
The foreign minister’s statement was met with a flood of comments online asking why she had effectively recognised Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights – which Israel seized from Syria in the six-day war in 1967 – and not described it as occupied.
The Australia Palestine Advocacy Network described the phrasing as “alarming”, noting that Israeli sovereignty was recognised only by Israel and by the US under the Trump administration.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has sought to clear up the confusion, insisting Wong’s language about the town of Majdal Shams was not meant to signal a policy shift.
“There is no change in our position that the Golan Heights are occupied by Israel, as determined by the UN security council,” a spokesperson for the department told Guardian Australia.
“Our longstanding position is that the Golan Heights are a matter for Israel and Syria to determine through negotiations in the context of a comprehensive peace settlement.”
The imprecise language comes after Wong previously criticised the then prime minister, Scott Morrison, for what she described as a lack of focus on detail in international relations.
In 2021, when Morrison accidentally endorsed Xi Jinping’s formula for Taiwan reunification, Wong said “words matter” in diplomacy.
A government source said the point of Wong’s statement, posted online on Sunday, “was to highlight the real risks of escalation and to condemn the strikes that led to the civilian deaths in the town of Majdal Shams”.
The source claimed the post “acknowledged the fact that the town is administered and occupied by Israel”.
But Wong’s statement, which was posted to both X and Instagram, began with the sentence: “Australia unequivocally condemns the strike on the northern Israeli town of Majdal Shams.”
There was no reference in the statement to the area as occupied territory.
On Monday (local time) the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, visited Majdal Shams, a majority Druze village, and promised a “harsh” response to the rocket strike on the occupied Golan Heights that killed 12 children as they played football.
“The state of Israel will not and cannot let this pass,” Netanyahu said. Video footage showed a crowd of Druze residents gathering in objection to Netanyahu’s visit, some shouting in dissent.
Israeli and US officials have blamed Hezbollah for the attack, but the claims have been denied by the Lebanese militant group.
The Australian Greens’ foreign affairs spokesperson, Jordon Steele-John, wrote to Wong on Wednesday asking her to clarify the government’s stance.
“The community deserves to know why the minister’s position is seemingly contradictory with her own department,” Steele-John said.
“Questions should be asked how the Trump position somehow became official Australian policy for a day before the department clarified it.”
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In November 1967, the UN security council emphasised “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war” and called on Israel to withdraw “from territories occupied in the recent conflict”.
That resolution was adopted shortly after the six-day war, when Israel also seized the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza.
In 1981, UN security council members unanimously agreed that “the Israeli decision to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights is null and void and without international legal effect”.
But in 2019, Donald Trump announced in a tweet: “After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability!”
Israel – which passed a law in 1981 to extend Israeli “laws, jurisdiction and administration” to the Golan Heights – argues the world should recognise “the reality on the ground” and follow the US lead.
In a UN debate about Trump’s decision, the Israeli representative said that from the moment of Israel’s founding, the Syrian regime had “maintained a policy of aggression” against Israel.
“Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights is forever,” the Israeli envoy, Danny Danon, said in 2019.
Trump was accused by commentators of breaking the postwar norm of refusing to recognise the forcible annexation of territory – a stance that underpinned western opposition to the Russian annexation of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea.
In October 2022, the Australian government denounced Russia’s “sham referenda in occupied areas of Ukraine”.
Wong and the attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, said at the time it was “baseless and false” to claim Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia were now part of Russia.
The Australian government announced in last August it would formally describe the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza as the Occupied Palestinian Territories, saying this was in line with allies including the UK and consistent with international law.