U.S. policy over Jerusalem triggers unrest in Lebanon
JERUSALEM — Lebanese security forces broke up a large protest Sunday outside the heavily guarded U.S. Embassy after demonstrators pelted them with stones.
Hundreds of protesters gathered early Sunday near the embassy to reject the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. They burned an effigy of President Donald Trump, U.S. and Israeli flags, as well as piles of garbage, sending plumes of smoke into the air hundreds of yards outside the embassy. As youths — many wrapped in Palestinian scarves and flags — hurled stones, security forces responded with tear gas and water cannons.
The U.S. decision has ignited protests across the Middle East — where it is widely seen as a blatantly pro-Israel move that threatens the decades-old peace process — and also has upended decades of U.S. policy and a longstanding international consensus, that the fate of Jerusalem be decided in negotiations. Israeli and Palestinian claims to the city’s eastern sector form the emotional core of their conflict, and Mr. Trump’s announcement was seen as siding with the Israelis and has drawn wide international criticism.
In Jerusalem, a Palestinian stabbed an Israeli security guard, seriously wounding him in the first attack in the volatile city since Mr. Trump’s pronouncement Wednesday. Violence in the city had been limited to small confrontations between protesters and Israeli security forces, while the larger demonstrations and clashes in the occupied West Bank and Gaza had largely died out by Sunday.
At the same time, Arab foreign ministers meeting in Cairo demanded that the United States rescind the decision.
And outside the Middle East, the French and Israeli leaders sparred verbally Sunday over the U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
But predictions of explosive violence across the region have not come true, and traditional allies of the Palestinians have offered little concrete support. Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia movement founded in response to the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, has condemned Mr. Trump’s decision, although its first mass rally will not take place until Tuesday.
In northern Beirut, security forces cut off all roads leading to the U.S. Embassy to prevent protesters from reaching it. The forces also set up barbed wire about half a mile from the compound.
After a rowdy start, the protest drew several hundred people and became more peaceful, with demonstrators chanting and singing.
The clashes resumed in the afternoon, with security forces chasing protesters, arresting a handful of them and lobbing tear gas canisters when the demonstrators tried to breach the barbed wire and reach a closed road leading to the embassy.
In response, demonstrators who were bused there from in and around Beirut threw stones at the security forces and set nearby garbage drums on fire, witnesses said.
Several people reported temporary breathing problems as a result of inhaling tear gas, Lebanese television network LBC said. The Health Ministry later said eight people had been hospitalized and 43 people treated at the scene.
Elsewhere, at a meeting in Paris with Israel’s visiting prime minister, French President Emmanuel Macron condemned recent violence against Israelis. But he also expressed “disapproval” of Mr.Trump’s decision, calling it“dangerous for peace.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has called Mr. Trump’s decision “historic,” said Israel has maintained its capital in the city for 70 years and the Jewish connection to Jerusalem goes back 3,000 years.
“Paris is the capital of France, Jerusalem is the capital of Israel,” he said. “We respect your history and your choices. And we know that as friends,you respect ours.”
The exchange between the two allies set the stage for what could be a tense meeting Monday for Mr. Netanyahu with European Union foreign ministers in Brussels. The Jerusalem issue and the moribund peace process are expected to be high on the agenda.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has said Mr. Trump’s decision has in effect disqualified the U.S. from continuing in its role as the traditional mediator of peace talks. The Palestinians have spent recent days trying to rally Arab and broader international opposition to the decision.
The Palestinians staged three “days of rage” after Mr. Trump’s dramatic announcement, with clashes breaking out in flashpoints across the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, and Gaza militants firing rockets into Israel. Four people in Gaza were killed. In the West Bank, there were dozens of injuries, but no deaths.
There were indications that Sunday’s stabbing at the Jerusalem bus station was motivated by Mr. Trump’s move, although police did not officially confirm it.
They said the attacker was a 24-year-old Palestinian from the West Bank city of Nablus. Israeli media identified him as Yassin Abu alQarah, who posted on his Facebook page in recent days about Jerusalem, saying “our blood is devoted” to the holy city.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the guard sustained a serious wound to his upper body and the attacker was apprehended.
Injecting another element of uncertainty into the simmering tensions, Israel said on Sunday it had destroyed a tunnel dug by Hamas from Gaza into Israeli territory.
A senior U.S. official appealed to world leaders, especially in the Middle East, to calm regional tensions.
Acting Assistant Secretary of State David Satterfield told Arab journalists that Mr. Trump’s pronouncement was merely a “recognition of simple reality” that Israel’s government already is in Jerusalem.
Demonstrators were not only turning out Sunday in Beirut. In Jakarta, the capital of the world’s most populous Muslim-dominated country, Indonesia, demonstrators also protested.