Arab League slams US announcement that its Jerusalem embassy will open on nakba
The Arab League yesterday slammed the US announcement that it would move its embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in May to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the Israeli state’s foundation.
The news enraged the Palestine Liberation Organisation, who called it a “blatant provocation”. May 14 is also the date on which Palestinians mark the displacement of 700,000 Palestinians during Israel’s creation, known as the nakba, or catastrophe.
Arab League Secretary General Ahmed Aboul Gheit said that Washington’s approach could destroy the last hope for peace and coexistence between the Palestinians and Israelis.
Mr Aboul Gheit said relocating the embassy on the same date as the nakba anniversary showed Washington’s full bias for Israel and a lack of any rational reading of the nature and history of the conflict by the US.
He said the US was no longer entitled to sponsor the Middle East peace process, echoing similar claims made by the Palestinian Authority since US President Donald Trump announced the embassy relocation in December last year.
But Mr Aboul Gheit said that the embassy relocation would not affect Jerusalem’s status as an occupied city.
The PLO immediately decried Washington’s embassy announcement as a “provocation to all Arabs”.
“The American administration’s decisions to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and choose the Palestinian people’s nakba as the date for this step is a blatant violation of international law,” said the PLO’s second-in-command, Saeb Erekat.
Mr Erekat said the result would be “the destruction of the two-state option, as well as a blatant provocation to all Arabs and Muslims”.
Israel follows the Jewish lunar calendar, so this year’s official independence celebration falls on April 19.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the announcement on Friday, thanking US President Donald Trump for his leadership and friendship.
The embassy move is expected to complicate efforts to restart peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians, and further jeopardise the traditional US role as an “honest broker”.
Until now, the US embassy has been in Tel Aviv, with a
consulate general in Jerusalem representing American interests in the Palestinian territories.
The new embassy will be in the consular building in Jerusalem’s Arnona neighbourhood while Washington searches for a permanent location, “the planning and construction of which will be a longer-term undertaking”, US State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said.
The interim embassy will contain office space for the ambassador and a small staff, she said.
“By the end of next year, we intend to open a new embassy Jerusalem annex on the Arnona compound that will provide the ambassador and his team with expanded interim office space,” Ms Nauert said.
Mr Trump broke with decades of policy in December last year when he announced US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and pledged to move the embassy.
The move drew near global condemnation, enraged the Palestinians and sparked days of unrest in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.
It ruptured generations of international consensus that Jerusalem’s status should be settled as part of a two-state peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.
It claims all of Jerusalem as its capital, while many Palestinians see the eastern part as the capital of a future Palestinian state.
Mr Trump said his recognition of Jerusalem, which was a 2016 campaign pledge, marked the start of a new approach to solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Israelis and Palestinians alike have seen his move as Washington taking Israel’s side in the conflict – a view reinforced by the White House’s recent decision to withhold financing for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas travelled to the UN’s headquarters in New York this week to call for an international conference by mid-2018 in which the US would not have the central mediating role.
Mr Trump’s envoy for Middle East peace, Jason Greenblatt, and his son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, then met behind closed doors with UN Security Council ambassadors, soliciting their support for a prospective Trump peace plan.
While the Palestinians want a new international way to guide peace talks, the details of the Trump plan and its timing are still unclear.
The revised schedule on the embassy move came after US Vice President Mike Pence pledged only last month to move the embassy by the end of next year in a speech to Israel’s parliament that led to Palestinian members being expelled after they shouted in protest.
“The hardest deal to make of any kind is between the Israelis and Palestinians,” Mr Trump said on Friday. “We’re actually making great headway. Jerusalem was the right thing to do.”