Watch: Trump playing with fire in Jerusalem

On Tuesday I spoke to Aaron Maté of The Real News about President Donald Trump’s expected move to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Trump has already told Israeli and Arab leaders that he will announce the move on Wednesday.

Trump is, however, also expected to sign a waiver that will delay relocating the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem for at least another six months.

Every president has signed the waiver since a 1995 law was passed requiring the embassy move. This will be the second time Trump will have delayed the relocation since he took office in January.

Trump’s announcement will end decades of US policy that recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital could come only after the status of the city is settled in negotiations.

Last month, US lawmakers held hearings to promote recognizing Jerusalem and moving the embassy that only heard from members of the Israel lobby, and completely excluded Palestinians.

Israel claims all of Jerusalem as its “united and eternal” capital.

The western part of the city was conquered and ethnically cleansed of its Palestinian residents by Zionist militias as Israel was established in 1948.

While a number of countries have recognized Israel’s “de facto” control of what came to be known as West Jerusalem, none has recognized any part of the city as Israel’s capital.

The United Nations and world governments consider East Jerusalem, which Israel invaded in 1967, to be part of the occupied West Bank. The UN Security Council has ruled Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem to be “null and void.”

On the ground in East Jerusalem, Palestinians face incremental ethnic cleansing by Israel to make way for Jewish settlers.

Israel implements a host of measures to make the lives of Palestinians in the city impossible, including building restrictions, home demolitions and expulsions, and the revocation of residency rights.

Since the occupation began in 1967, according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, Israel has treated Palestinians indigenous to the city “as unwanted immigrants and worked systematically to drive them out of the area.”

Trump’s shift has already been strongly denounced by the 57 member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, and US allies, including France, have warned that the announcement would sabotage the already dim prospects of achieving a two-state solution.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said the American move would cross a “red line” and threatened that his country “could go as far as cutting diplomatic ties with Israel over the issue.”

I argued on The Real News that years of unconditional US support for Israel, coupled with international inaction, have set the stage for Trump’s moves on Jerusalem.

I told Maté that Palestinians in Jerusalem have shown a tremendous capacity to resist, such as the weeks of nonviolent civil disobedience last summer that forced Israel to retreat from measures aimed at tightening its grip on the al-Aqsa mosque compound.

However, Trump’s move will embolden the so-called Temple Movement.

With significant Israeli government backing, this extremist Jewish movement aims to destroy Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque and Dome of the Rock and replace them with a Jewish temple – potentially triggering religious conflict on an unimaginable scale.

Watch the video of my interview with Maté above.

Comments

"Promise made, Promise kept,"

Permalink R Davis replied on Sat, 12/09/2017 - 03:18

"Promise made, Promise kept," declared pastor Paula White, a member of the president's faith advisory council & senior pastor of New Destiny Christian Center in Orlando Florida.
Evangelicals are ecstatic, for Israel to us is a scared place & the Jewish people are our dearest friends.

End Time:
The Rapture is a term of Christian eschatology, referring to a purported end time event when all Christian believers - living & resurrected dead - will rise & join Christ for eternity.

I have read - watched & listened to all manner of explanations of The Rapture - all of it shouts NUCLEAR HOLOCAUST to me.
I wonder if the foretelling of The Rapture is not in reality, a divine warning to mankind on earth, of a crisis of mammoth proportions where most of the population of earth will be annihilated.
I wonder if the evil that is greed & bigotry, has not deliberately reinterpreted this warning in a despicable attempt to hide the truth from mankind, so as to protect the destruction.