Warnings on Jerusalem mount
US recognition of city as Israeli capital red line for Muslims – Erdogan
TURKEY threatened yesterday to cut diplomatic ties with Israel if US President Donald Trump recognised Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, joining a mounting chorus of voices saying the move would unleash turmoil. Senior US officials said some officers in the State Department were also deeply concerned and the Palestinian Authority, Saudi Arabia and the Arab League all warned any such announcement would have repercussions across the region.
A senior US official said last week that Trump was likely to make the announcement today, though his adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner said on Sunday no final decision had been made.
Such a decision would break with decades of US policy that Jerusalem’s status must be decided in negotiations.
Israel captured Arab East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war. It later annexed it, declaring the whole of the city as its capital.
The declaration is not recognised internationally and Palestinians want Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.
“Mr Trump, Jerusalem is the red line of Muslims,” Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan told a parliamentary meeting of his ruling AK Party.
“This can go as far as severing Turkey’s ties with Israel. I am warning the United States not to take such a step which will deepen the problems in the region.”
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has so far declined to speculate on what Trump might say.
But Israel’s intelligence and transport minister, Israel Katz, took to Twitter to reject Turkey’s threat and reiterate Israel’s position on the ancient city, which is one of a long list of stumbling blocks in years of failed peace talks with the Palestinians.
“We don’t take orders or accept threats from the president of Turkey,” he wrote.
“There would be no more righteous or proper a historical move now than recognising Jerusalem, the Jewish people’s capital for the past 3 000 years, as the capital of the State of Israel.”
Two US officials, who did not want to be named, said that news of the plan to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital had kicked up resistance from the State Department’s Near Eastern Affairs bureau (NEA), which deals with the region. “Senior [officials] in NEA and a number of ambassadors from the region expressed their deep concern about doing this,” one official said, adding that the concerns focused on security.
A fourth US official said the consensus US intelligence estimate was that the move would risk triggering a backlash against Israel, and also potentially against US interests in the Middle East.
Trump delayed a controversial decision on the ancient holy city on Monday, following frantic public warnings from allies and phone calls between world leaders.
Arab League chief Ahmed Abul Gheit said member states had decided to meet in Cairo given the danger of this matter, and the possible negative consequences for Palestine and the Arab and Islamic region.
US officials said Trump was expected to stop short of moving the embassy to Jerusalem outright – a central campaign pledge which his administration has postponed once already. But domestic politics may still push him to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital instead.
Trump has said he wants to relaunch frozen peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians in search of the ultimate deal – but recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital would destroy that effort, a senior Palestinian official warned. “That totally destroys any chance that he will play a role as an honest broker,” Nabil Shaath, an adviser to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, said yesterday.
Palestine Liberation Organisation secretary-general Saeb Erakat warned earlier that a change in the US stance on Jerusalem would spell disaster.
Palestinian leaders have been lobbying regional leaders to oppose any shift in US policy, and the armed Islamist movement Hamas has threatened to launch a new intifada uprising.
Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman, however, urged Trump to grasp a “historic opportunity”.
All foreign embassies in Israel are located in Tel Aviv, with consular representation in Jerusalem.
In 1995, the US Congress passed the socalled Jerusalem Embassy Act recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and stating the US embassy should be moved there.
But an inbuilt waiver, which allows the president to temporarily postpone the move on grounds of national security, has been repeatedly invoked by successive US presidents.