Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
More deaths as Trump rejected
But his threats seem to cow some at UN
GAZA: Palestinians launched more anti-US protests yesterday and at least one demonstrator was killed in the Gaza Strip, a health official said after the UN General Assembly rejected Washington’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Smoke billowed from burning tyres at a demonstration in Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, two days before Christmas celebrations in the biblical town.
Israeli gunfire killed a 24- year- old Palestinian and wounded 10 other protesters during a demonstration in the southern Gaza Strip, a spokesman for the Palestinian Health Ministry there said. The Israeli military said it was checking the report.
One of the wounded, part of a crowd that approached the border fence chanting that US president Donald Trump was a “fool” and a “coward”, was dressed as Santa Claus, witnesses said.
Protests erupted in all of the West Bank’s seven cities and in East Jerusalem. Health officials said at least five Palestinians were wounded by rubber bullets fired by Israeli security forces, who also used tear gas.
Defying the US on Thursday, the UN General Assembly approved a resolution calling for the US to drop its December 6 recognition of Jerusalem, a city revered by Jews, Muslims and Christians, as Israel’s capital.
Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, in a Christmas message, condemned Trump’s reversal of a decades-old US policy on Jerusalem as “an insult to millions of people worldwide, and also to the city of Bethlehem”. Israel considers Jerusalem its eternal and indivisible capital. Palestinians want the capital of an independent Palestinian state to be in the city’s eastern sector, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East War and annexed in a move never recognised internationally.
Most countries regard the status of Jerusalem as a matter to be settled in an eventual Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, although that process is now stalled.
Nine countries voted against the UN resolution and 35 abstained. Twenty-one countries did not cast a vote.
Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for Gaza’s dominant Hamas Islamists, called the UN vote a defeat for Trump, while Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected it as “preposterous” and branded the UN a “house of lies”.
But Michael Oren, Israel’s deputy minister for diplomacy, seemed to play down the support for the resolution shown by many countries Israel considers friends.
“We have an interest in tightening our bilateral relations with a long list of countries in the world, and expect and hope that one day, they will vote with us, or for us in the United Nations,” Oren said on Tel Aviv radio station 102 FM.
“But I am not prepared to suspend all co-operation with important countries, such as
PICTURE: AP India,” he said. Netanyahu, who hosted Indian prime minister Narendra Modi in July, is due to visit New Delhi next month.
Palestinians have protested daily since Trump’s Jerusalem announcement, throwing stones at Israeli security forces. Gaza militants have also launched sporadic rocket fire.
Yesterday’s death in Gaza raised to nine the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli gunfire during the demonstrations, Palestinian health officials said, and dozens have been wounded. Two militants were killed in an Israeli air strike in Gaza after a rocket attack. There have been no Israeli fatalities or significant injuries. Amnesty International called on Israeli authorities to stop using “excessive force”.
“The fact that live ammunition has been used during protests in Gaza and the West Bank is particularly shocking,” it said yesterday.
In the run-up to the UN vote, Trump threatened to cut off financial aid to countries that supported the resolution. His warning appeared to have some impact, with more countries abstaining and rejecting the document than usually associated with Palestinian-related resolutions. – Reuters