Trump faces Jerusalem backlash
President fufils promise to recognise city as the capital of Israel and bury ‘failed strategies of the past’
DONALD TRUMP said he was casting aside the “failed strategies of the past” last night as he upended 70 years of US foreign policy and forged ahead with his controversial decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
The president’s announcement was celebrated by Israel but met with fury from Palestinians, who accused him of destroying any hope of a peace deal.
“We cannot solve our problems by making the same failed assumptions and repeating the same failed strategies of the past,” Mr Trump said.
“It is time to officially recognise Je- rusalem as the capital of Israel.” Defying warnings from world leaders, Mr Trump said he “judged this course of action to be in the best interest of the US and the pursuit of peace between Israel and the Palestinians”.
He said that America would become the only country in the world to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, making good on a campaign promise important to many evangelical Christian and Right-wing Jewish voters.
The Palestinians insist that there can be no peace deal unless they are able to have East Jerusalem as the capital of their own independent state and said Mr Trump’s unilateral move had disqualified the US as peace broker.
“These condemned and unacceptable measures are a deliberate undermining of all efforts exerted to achieve peace and represent a declaration of the United States’s withdrawal from undertaking the role it has played over the past decades in sponsoring the peace process,” said Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president.
Hamas, the Palestinian militant Islamist group, which controls the Gaza strip, accused Mr Trump of “flagrant aggression” and called for Muslims across the Middle East to rise up against US interests. US embassies across the Middle East bolstered their security arrangements last night in anticipation of potentially violent protests.
The decision was hailed by Israel and Jerusalem’s mayor ordered the US flag to be beamed in lights against the walls of the Old City in celebration.
“This is a historic day,” said Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister. “We are profoundly grateful to the president for his courageous and just decision.”
Mr Trump tried to placate Palestinian anger by saying his decision did not rule out the possibility of a two-state solution, where Jerusalem would be the capital of both Israel and an independent Palestinian state.
“We are not taking a position of any final status issues including the specific boundaries of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem or the resolution of contested issues,” Mr Trump said. “The US would support a two-state solution if agreed to by both sides.” He called “for calm, for moderation, and for the voices of tolerance to prevail”.
With Mike Pence, the US vice president, standing by his side, Mr Trump reminded US voters that both Bill Clinton and George W Bush had promised to move the US embassy to Jerusalem but had reneged once in office.
“They failed to deliver. Today, I am delivering,” he said.
Theresa May was among world leaders who expressed concern about the US move. “We disagree with the US decision to move its embassy to Jerusalem and recognise Jerusalem as the Israeli capital before a final status agreement. We believe it is unhelpful in terms of prospects for peace.
“The British Embassy is based in Tel Aviv and we have no plans to move it,” she said.
The Pope earlier said he had “deep concern” about the situation in Jerusalem and urged Mr Trump not to move ahead.
“I make a heartfelt appeal so that all commit themselves to respecting the
status quo of the city, in conformity with the pertinent resolutions of the UN,” he said. Reaction was muted from most of America’s Arab allies, many of whom have either official or covert relationships with Israel.
But reaction was fierce from Turkey. Bekir Bozdag, the deputy prime minister, warned that Mr Trump was “plunging the region and the world into a fire with no end in sight”.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, its president, called for a summit of Muslim leaders next week in Istanbul to discuss the situation.
Mr Trump called last night for Saudi Arabia to lift its blockade on Yemen and “allow food, fuel, water, and medicine to reach the Yemeni people”. Saudi Arabia has refused to allow commercial supplies to reach rebel-held parts of Yemen, prompting UN warnings that millions risk starving to death.
‘It is time to officially recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel’
Given that even Donald Trump’s colleagues are often unable to fathom the workings of the President’s mind, the rest of us surely have no chance. And there have been few clearer demonstrations than his incomprehensible decision yesterday formally to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
The truly problematic issue is not whether it is the right or the wrong thing to have done. For the Israelis it is absolutely right, while for pretty much everyone else it is not. On one level, it is also a matter of simple common sense that Jerusalem is recognised as Israel’s capital. Because it is the capital – the seat of government, parliament, the presidency and the Supreme Court. In no other nation do outsiders feel they have the right to decide what is and what isn’t the capital city.
No, the real issue is why President Trump decided to be the first occupant of the Oval Office to make good on a campaign promise to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Almost all of his recent predecessors have said that they would do so. And not one has followed through when in office. While it is an easy promise to make on the campaign trail, in the real world it has always been obvious that the status of Jerusalem should be the final piece of any jigsaw plan for lasting peace in the Middle East, rather than the first.
Indeed, not moving the embassy to Jerusalem has been a deliberate act of US policy. In 1995, Congress passed a law that mandates its relocation, but gives the president a six monthly waiver on supposed national security grounds. Every president has used that waiver every six months – including President Trump in June – and for good reason.
It is almost entirely irrelevant that Israel considers Jerusalem to be its capital, because of the complications that surround the city. As a matter of historic fact, Jews have been the largest ethnic group in Jerusalem for centuries. But for the first 19 years after Israel’s creation in 1948 Jerusalem was split, with East Jerusalem under Jordanian rule and Jews expelled and barred from visiting the religion’s holiest places.
When the Arabs launched the Six-day War against Israel in 1967, they did not expect to lose – and certainly did not expect that it would lead to the reunification of Jerusalem, this time under Israeli control.
But it remains a divided city, despite the Israelis offering Palestinians freedom of worship at holy sites and full citizenship – and its status has always proved the most intractable issue in any peace process. For Israel, the 1980 Basic Law confirms that “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel.” But for the Palestinians, East Jerusalem must also be the capital of any state of their own.
Whatever President Trump’s protestations that this would not affect a two-state solution, the move seems to destroy the idea that there is a compromise to be made – and to do so for no apparent purpose.
For the upside is minimal. Israelis may be delighted: they have always wanted the world to recognise reality and accept Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Indeed for Jews everywhere there is a deep-rooted, spiritual connection with the city. Every Passover, at every dinner table where Jews are gathered, the same prayer is uttered: “Next year in Jerusalem.”
But recognition of Jerusalem would barely figure in the top hundred issues that most Israeli politicians would like to see resolved by the US, and they don’t need convincing of the strength of America’s support. Far more pressing and important is the need for a coherent US strategy for dealing with the ever-growing Iranian influence in the region. And on that, President Trump is all mouth and no trousers.
So for a president who wrote The Art of the Deal, it is difficult to see the utility of his move. Especially when the downside is that there is a genuine risk of Palestinian violence.
There’s not even any particular US constituency that has been doing more than going through the motions of asking for recognition. US Jewish voters, like the Israelis, see far more important issues being ignored. And even the more vocal Christian Zionists have hardly been threatening to desert the President because he didn’t recognise Jerusalem.
So why did he do it? The conclusion one has to reach is that this is simply President Trump being President Trump: unfathomable, provocative and plain stupid.