Middle East peace remains elusive

BEIJING: Washington’s transfer of its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem resulted in protests along the Gaza Strip border on Monday, leading to the death of at least 63 Palestinians in clashes with the Israeli forces.

The protests coincided with the 70th anniversary of Israel’s declaration of independence, a day before what the Palestinians call “Nakba” (Catastrophe), which marks the displacement of some 750 000 Palestinians from their homeland during the Arab-Israeli War in 1948. Seventy years later, war and conflict continue to ripple across the region, and a peaceful Middle East remains elusive.

In 1948, Israel declared statehood, sparking an eight-month war with a number of Arab states, known as the First Arab-Israeli War. During the war, Zionist forces took control of the western part of Jerusalem, which is considered the holy city for three major religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. In 1967, Israel swept to victory over its Arab neighbours in the Six Day War, also known as the Third Arab-Israeli War, and took control of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. For years, the Palestinians have been seeking to establish an independent state, with East Jerusalem as its capital city in light of a UN-proposed twostate solution based on the pre1967 borders.

Over the past 70 years, five Arab-Israeli wars and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts have led to over 80 000 deaths. In recent decades, clashes in Yemen, Lebanon and Turkey, the Iran-Iraq War, the Gulf War, the Iraq War and the Syrian conflict altogether have killed some two million people in the region. Seven decades after the First Arab-Israeli War, a new Pandora’s Box has opened, this time featuring the US’s relocation of its Israeli embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Washington’s transfer of its embassy to Jerusalem completely eliminates the “opportunity for peace between Palestine and Israel”, said Libyan researcher and Middle East expert Jalal al-Fitouri. Israeli and Palestinian negotiators have not met in four years, with the peace process frozen.

After the embassy relocation, which is viewed as a major provocation by the Palestinians and the Arab world, chances for the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations seem ever slimmer. – Xinhua