When Javier Milei visited Israel and announced that he would be moving Argentina’s embassy to Jerusalem, I suppose that was terribly ‘populist’ of him.

Try as I might, I can’t find it in me to be appalled by Milei’s pronouncement, and not because he already floated it during his election campaign. For one thing, it must be nice to have a government that decides its own foreign policy rather than contracting out such matters to the European Commission, the US State Department and the NGO sector. For another, Argentina’s president is taking a stand that Britain ought to have taken long ago. As The Spectator’s move-the-embassy-to-Jerusalem correspondent, I am by now a veteran of this particular debate and well aware that any attempt by a British government to adopt this policy would be blocked by the SOAS graduate employment scheme more commonly known as the Foreign Office. Nevertheless, I persist.

With so much of the international community as uninterested in Israel’s millennia-old connection to Jerusalem as they are to the country’s security concerns, renting some office space in the business district and calling it an embassy is a low-cost but highly symbolic way of reassuring the Jewish state that you understand the tough street it lives on. That reassurance would not only be for Israel’s benefit but for the Palestinians’ benefit, too. A reassured Israel would be more likely to take further risks with its security for a chance at peace.

One of the most scarring phenomena for Israelis since the Oslo Accords has been diplomatic double-dealing. Time and again, Israel was urged to make concessions – withdraw from Gaza, hand over major West Bank cities, evacuate settlements. In each case, the promise from foreign capitals was the same: do this and, if the Palestinians exploit these concessions to attack you, we will back your right to self-defence.

Well, Israel made the concessions, the Palestinians exploited them, and, with some honourable exceptions, the international community went wobbly whenever Israel mounted a military operation. This has left Israelis deeply cynical, and while it is not the only reason the country has move to the political right, it is a contributing factor. If Washington and Brussels want to advance the cause of Middle East peace and Palestinian statehood, they need to regain Israelis’ trust. Given how shamelessly they squandered that trust, and how much Israeli blood was shed in the process, re-engaging could take a generation. But recognising Israel’s capital and moving their embassies there (as the United States, Guatemala, Honduras, Papua New Guinea and Kosovo have done) would be a good will gesture that could speed things up considerably.

And, yes, both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas would wail and gnash their gums about it. Any number of Arab and Muslim countries would, too. But they know as well as the White House and the UN Security Council that, despite the current rhetoric of Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel can be very pragmatic about territorial concessions. Successive prime ministers have been open to land swaps – handing a percentage of Israel to the Palestinians in exchange for retaining the major settlement blocs – and there is a record of right-wing premiers giving up territory. Menachem Begin returned the Sinai to Egypt, Netanyahu handed most of Hebron to the Palestinians, and Ariel Sharon gave them all of Gaza. Other countries could follow Argentina in the full knowledge that the final status of Jerusalem would have to be agreed in eventual bilateral negotiations.

That reassurance would be welcome in light of the 7 October attacks and the ugly responses (some anti-Israel, some anti-Semitic, some patently pro-Hamas) seen on the streets of major western cities. It would strengthen the international community’s hand much more than the proposal by David Cameron and his fellow-travellers in Washington and Brussels to pre-emptively declare a Palestinian state without requiring the Palestinians to first make peace with Israel. If you’re wondering why Milei’s recognition of Jerusalem is a dangerous unilateral move but Cameron’s proposed recognition of Palestine is not, there is a very simple answer: Milei does things policy-makers and opinion-formers disapprove of, and is therefore wrong, whereas Cameron is willing to do things they approve of, and is therefore right.

Which is why I’m sceptical that Milei’s Jerusalem gambit is an act of populism. I mean, it’s not as if the location of Argentina’s embassy is on the lips of every voter in Córdoba and Mendoza. (Argentina doesn’t even have an ambassador in Israel at present.) By definition, it is not a policy designed to pander to popular sentiment. It is a judgment call on Milei’s part and, whatever one might think of his other positions, this one shows a moral clarity and strategic nous largely absent from the professional foreign policy industry.

I’d like to go one step further, and turn these concepts on their head by suggesting that not only is Milei’s stance not populist, but that it is the stance of the international community that is populist. It’s a niche kind of populism, though: elite populism. Withholding recognition of Jerusalem and generally treating Israel like an embarrassing distant relation is the preference of those who populate the foreign policy industry: the diplomats and the civil servants, the academics and the lawyers, the lobbyists and the NGOs, the activists and the journalists.

These are the people who gave us the Oslo process, dismissed every Israeli warning that it wasn’t working, then abruptly decided it had always been doomed, that Israel was entirely to blame, and the international community’s focus should be on building up a Palestinian state that the Israelis would have no choice but to agree to. Their new doctrine is as irreconcilable with the evidence as their old one, but evidence hardly comes into it. These are their base prejudices. Elite actors feel left behind by developments such as the United States relocating its embassy and Arab states forging ties with Israel. They are angry and resentful and so they scorn the nuance and complexity of a position such as Javier Milei’s. Their problem with him is not that he’s a populist. It’s that he refuses to pander to them.