Unforgivable decisions
IT WAS all entirely predictable that President Donald Trump's decisions to relocate the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, and to recognise the city as the capital of Israel, would lead to bloodshed, which makes it so much the more unforgivable.
The Trump administration decided to move its embassy in open defiance of a protocol endorsed by Western governments, including hitherto the US, that the city cannot be recognised as Israel's capital before a peace agreement is reached with the Palestinians.
Not only has the move divided and inflamed emotions in the region, and built more hostility, but it has appalled America's friends in the West. Already dozens of Palestinians demonstrators have died as a direct, immediate consequence of this high-profile and highly provocative move
The South African government has so far been among a few countries that have taken firm action by recalling its ambassador in protest against the killing of at least 55 unarmed civilians on the Gaza border on Monday.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was acting in self-defence against the coastal enclave's ruling Hamas group when it killed the protesters and wounded 2 700.
The pomp during the opening ceremony at the new embassy – and the Trumpian rhetoric in a video message about a “strong commitment to peace” – sounded especially empty when juxtaposed on the split-screen rolling global news coverage with the scenes of burning, shooting and ambulances around the occupied territories.
Briefings about a Trump Middle East “peace plan” sounded almost an act of sarcasm in the circumstances. White House spokesperson Raj Shah told reporters that the US did not believe the opening of the embassy or the latest violence would affect its peace plan, whose chief architects are the president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt.
Yet Washington has no doubt undercut its own peace efforts and when complete, the plan runs a risk of being dead on arrival.
Moreover, the embassy move comes swiftly after America's withdrawal from the Iranian nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which will merely encourage Iran to go nuclear, if only to balance Israel's missiles.
So the outlook in the region, so rarely optimistic, is dismal for peace.