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Jewish News 7 December 2017
News / Donald Trump’s Jerusalem speech
Anger over Trump’s Jerusalem decision Continued from page 1 a boon to Jewish groups around the world, with Israel’s Education Minister Naftali Bennett saying Trump had “added another brick to the walls of Jerusalem, to the foundation of the Jewish nation”. However, there was deepening concern this week that the announcement may precipitate a further round of violence, with Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh saying: “Palestinians will not allow this to pass… Their options are open in defending their land and their sacred places.” He was not alone in suggesting that Trump’s decision could end up costing lives, with Jordan’s King Abdullah II arguing that “ignoring Palestinian Muslim and Christian rights” in Jerusalem “could fuel terrorism”. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan added that it could prove “a red line” for the Muslim world. Anticipating violence, both Germany and France immediately altered their travel advice for citizens travelling to Israel and the Palestinian territories, as the PLO’s chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said the move “pushes the region into the furnace of violence, chaos, extremism and bloodshed”. The Arab world’s vehement protests are unlikely to worry Trump who, in his first year as president, appears to have thrived
on antagonising the Muslim world, instigating a travel ban on Muslim countries and re-tweeting Islamophobic video content. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said he would pull all Palestinian contacts with the US as a result, while Nabil Shaath, a senior Palestinian official, said any peace deal “dies here on the rocks”. Yesterday, British Prime Minister Theresa May said in Parliament during Prime Minister’s Questions that the UK had no intention of following suit, while Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn tweeted that it was “a reckless threat to peace”. Meanwhile in Europe, the EU’s foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini joined French President Emmanuel Macron in piling on the opprobrium. Germany’s Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said: “Anything that escalates the crisis during these times is counterproductive.” And, in an extraordinary and highly unusual intervention, Pope Francis also made “a heartfelt appeal” to “respect the status quo”. He added: “I cannot remain silent about my deep concern for the situation… Jerusalem is a unique city, sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims, where the holy places for the respective religions are venerated and it has a special vocation to peace.”
Donald Trump in reflective mood at Jerusalem’s Western Wall in May
A MOVE MORE THAN 20 YEARS IN THE MAKING The Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, voted for by the US Congress, provides for the relocation of the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. The law states that “each sovereign nation, under international law and custom, may designate its own capital” and that “since 1950, the city of Jerusalem has been the capital of the state of Israel”. Israel’s conquest of East Jerusalem in 1967 reunited
the city and in 1990 the US Congress unanimously adopted Senate Resolution 106, which declared that Jerusalem “must remain undivided and the rights of every ethnic and religious group protected”. Two years later they reaffirmed it in Resolution 113. The 1993 Oslo Accords of laid out a timetable for the resolution of “final status” issues, including Jerusalem, but lawmakers had urged the US
Secretary of State to relocate the embassy by 1999. In March 1995, 93 US senators signed a letter urging that “planning begin now” for relocation of the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. “The United States maintains its embassy in the functioning capital of every country except in the case of our democratic friend and strategic ally, the state of Israel,” they said in the 1995 Act.
BOND BETWEEN JEWS AND JERUSALEM UNDENIABLE JONATHAN ARKUSH ANALYSIS
For more than 3,000 years, Jerusalem has been the spiritual centre of Jewish life and, since the foundation of the state of Israel, the centre of that country’s political life. The Knesset has been addressed by heads of state, government and key inter-
national institutions on no fewer than 55 occasions. Ambassadors appointed to Israel may reside in Tel Aviv, but they present their credentials to the president at his Jerusalem residence. Diplomatic staff meet with their counterparts at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Jerusalem. So why is it so controversial that the US is going to recognise what we already know, that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel – its seat of govern-
ment and its legal institutions? You’d be hard pressed to find a significant number of Jewish people who disagree with the notion that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital. There are some who may dispute where its legal boundaries should lie – and that is a matter of political opinion. This move won’t change anything on the ground. The US is not passing judgement on what a final status agreement between the Israelis and
the Palestinians will look like. It is for the two sides, with the support of the international community, to reach an agreement. What is not up for negotiation is the undeniable link, going back thousands of years, between Jerusalem, the state of Israel and the Jewish people. It is telling that many of those who warn against recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital are also
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those who support unilateral recognition of Palestinian statehood even in the absence of a peace process and the functioning institutions of a state. If they seriously cared about Jerusalem and the peace process, what better way to respond than to return to peace talks without preconditions, as offered by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu? Jonathan Arkush is president of the Board of Deputies
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