Palestinians dealt embassy blow on eve of Nakba day

Amid high tensions on the eve of the 70th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba, or “catastrophe”, the US will today deal a huge blow to Palestinian dreams of statehood by moving its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Ahead of the opening, Israel yesterday celebrated the Jerusalem Day holiday marking the capture of East Jerusalem in 1967.

As flag-waving Israeli nationalists staged a provocative march through the Muslim quarter of the Old City en route to the Western Wall, leaders including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat made it clear there would be no division of the city with Palestinians.

Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniya went to Cairo to confer with Egyptian security officials who are concerned that mass protests along the Gaza-Israel border today and tomorrow could lead to more fatalities and a major eruption with Israel.

The protests are part of what is known as the Great March of Return, calling for Palestinian refugees to be allowed to return to homes inside Israel that were lost in the Nakba in 1948, when 700,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled.

Senior Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar said last week that there might be a mass storming of the border fence.

“What’s the problem if hundreds of thousands storm this fence which is not a border of a state?” Mr Sinwar asked.

Mr Trump, who was hailed in posters hung throughout the city as a “friend of Zion”, will address by video link the dignitaries and guests who will gather on the grounds of what is the US consulate in the Arnona neighbourhood of West Jerusalem.

The embassy move shores up his administration’s close alliance with Mr Netanyahu’s hard-right government and, despite US disclaimers, gives tacit approval to Israel’s expansionist agenda in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

While the US State Department insists that the embassy move does not prejudge final status talks on East Jerusalem,

International rejection of US President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal brings hope for Palestinians before Washington moves its embassy to Jerusalem this week, an official says.

The five other parties to the deal — Germany, France, Britain, Russia and China — say they will try to salvage the 2015 agreement in which sanctions were lifted in exchange for limits to Tehran’s nuclear programme.

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif is embarking on a diplomatic tour to Beijing, Moscow and Brussels at the same time as the US is to host a ceremony to move its mission in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, becoming the first country to do so since the 1980s.

The world powers’ opprobrium of Mr Trump’s withdrawal from the deal last week has shown the international community is willing to say “no” to the US, Nabil Shaath, senior adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, told

The National by phone. “The only feeling of optimism is based on the fact that the US is no longer the sole owner of the universe,” Mr Shaath said. “There are now other powers making the world more multipolar.”

But Mr Trump and his hawkish administration, which includes three Middle East envoys with strong ties to Israel, have pushed ahead with the embassy move in the face of Palestinian anger.

He also cut funding to the UN body that supports Palestinian refugees, plunging it into the most severe crisis in its history. Palestinian officials have cut contact with the White House as a protest against the move.

They must now rely on the wider international community, some of them key US allies such as France and Britain, for diplomatic support.

“They feel that the US abandoned its commitments. The US is a rich pariah state,” said Mr Shaath, a former Palestinian chief negotiator.

“From a total monopoly into some sort of multilateralism, that is really beginning to show. I think what happened on the Iranian issue is one of the indications that this is happening. That is a source of hope for the Palestinians.”

Mass Palestinian protests are expected in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as Mr Trump reverses decades of US foreign policy, moving the mission a day before the 70th anniversary of the day the Palestinians consider to be their “catastrophe”, known as the Nakba.

The day marks the displacement of about 700,000 Arabs as a result of the creation of the Israeli state in 1948.

Palestinian and other Arab leaders warned Mr Trump against moving the embassy for fear of inflaming anger, and dealing a further blow to the already ailing peace process.

Jerusalem is a city revered by Christians, Muslims and Jews. The Noble Sanctuary, or Haram Al Sharif, is the third-holiest site in Islam. It is in East Jerusalem, which Palestinians seek for a future state. The area was annexed by Israel in the 1967 Israeli-Arab War.

On Thursday, at the site of the new US embassy, Mr Shaath called for a boycott of all ceremonies related to its opening and more protests against Mr Trump’s decision. Only Guatemala and Paraguay have followed suit in announcing embassy moves to the holy city.

“The protests will continue. It’s basically a non-violent expression of Mr Trump and his ideas,” Mr Shaath said.

Speculation has surfaced in the Israeli media that Mr Trump is planning to use the embassy move to push Israel to withdraw from four East Jerusalem neighbourhoods. But the Palestinians will refuse any of his offers.

“We are not interested in the US as the sole broker,” Mr Shaath said. “We are going for an international process and not for an American process.”

He said that Jared Kushner, Jason Greenblatt and David Friedman, Mr Trump’s three confidants on the Middle East conflict, are “not relevant”.

“The Security Council, the General Assembly, the International Criminal Court – there are many resorts,” he said.

Mr Shaath repeated that the Palestinians are still seeking a non-violent resolution to the decades-long conflict, one based on a sovereign Palestinian state living side-by-side with Israel.

But Mr Trump’s actions in Jerusalem have revived memories of the very day that the Palestinians will mourn 24 hours after the embassy move, he said.

“What Trump is doing just reminds us of the ethnic cleansing that took place 70 years ago.”

US is not the sole owner of the universe ... Other powers are making the world more multipolar

NABIL SHAATH Senior adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas