As expected, President Trump on Wednesday recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital and announced plans to relocate the U.S. embassy there, a decision that is certain to inflame tensions in the region and throw a wrench in potential peace negotiations, paradoxically uniting the fractured middle east world against Israel and the U.S.
"I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel," Trump said shortly after 1pm in the White House.
Trump said the announcement “marks the beginning of a new approach to conflict between Israel and Palestinians.”
As discussed earlier, Trump’s move reverses decades of American policy in the Middle East and alienates regional allies, even as the president has made brokering an elusive Middle East peace deal a key goal.
“This is a long overdue step to advance the peace process and work towards a lasting agreement”, Mr Trump said in his remarks. He added that he was directing the US State Department to develop a plan to move its Israel embassy from its current location in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Trump framed the decision as a way to put his own stamp on one of history’s oldest conflicts.
“The record is in: after more than two decades of waivers, we are no closer to a lasting peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians,” the president said. “It would be folly to assume that repeating the exact same formula would now produce a different or better result."
The move showed Trump’s inclination to prioritize domestic politics over the desires of U.S. allies in the Middle East and Europe who warned the announcement could spark violence in a region that is already a powder keg.
"While previous presidents have made this a major campaign promise, they failed to deliver," the president said. "Today, I am delivering."
It will hardly play out that way.
As Bloomberg notes, leaders across the Middle East, including from Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Arab League have also spoken out against the plan, and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called Trump’s plan a sign of U.S. “failure and impotence.”
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Jordan’s King Abdullah II, warned him the announcement would have “dangerous” repercussions for regional stability. Separately, the Palestinian delegate to the United Kingdom said on Wednesday that President Trump's move to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel signals "a declaration of war" in the region. “He is declaring war in the Middle East, he is declaring war against 1.5 billion Muslims, hundreds of millions of Christians that are not going to accept the holy shrines to be totally under the hegemony of Israel,” Manuel Hassassian told BBC 4 Radio's "Today."
The Turkish government’s spokesman on Wednesday said that the United States’ decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel will plunge the region and the world into “a fire with no end in sight”.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said the “whole world is against” Trump’s move. He says that moving the embassy to Jerusalem would be a “grave mistake” and would “not bring any stability, peace but rather chaos and instability.”
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has also blasted Washington's decision to relocate the US embassy to Jerusalem as a display of incompetence. "That they claim they want to announce Quds as the capital of occupied Palestine is because of their incompetence and failure," Khamenei said, using the Arabic name for Jerusalem.
The Syrian government also weighed in on the planned move. "[The move] is the culmination of the crime of usurping Palestine and displacing the Palestinian people," a Foreign Ministry official told state news agency SANA.
Palestinian Christians in Bethlehem were spotted burning photographs of Donald Trump and holding signs reading “Move the embassy to your country, not ours,” and “Jerusalem, Palestine's heart, is not up to negotiations.”
[Hmmmm...who will fill this void?]
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday said US President Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem has ended Washington’s historic role as the key sponsor for Israel-Palestinian peace talks, and called for an emergency meeting of the Palestinian leadership.
“These reprehensible and rejected measures constitute a deliberate undermining of all peace efforts,” said Abbas of Trump’s decision.
Abbas said Trump’s speech “represents a declaration that the United States has withdrawn from playing the role it has played in the past decades in sponsoring the peace process.”
Abbas accused Trump of “violating international resolutions and bilateral agreements,” and said the decision was a “reward to Israel for denying agreements and defying international legitimacy that encourages it to continue the policy of occupation, settlement, apartheid and ethnic cleansing.”
Since the early 1990s, the US has been the key mediator for peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians.
Earlier Trump broke with decades of US and international policy by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and said he had directed the US State Department to begin the process of moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem as required by US law.
Trump maintained that his decision would not compromise the city’s geographic and political borders, which will still be determined by Israel and the Palestinians.
The Palestinian leader said he was calling for an “emergency meeting” of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Central Committee to create a “unified national position” and put “all options before it.”
The Czech Republic said in a statement Wednesday that it recognizes the pre-1967 west Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, but that it will only consider moving its embassy from Tel Aviv to the city after talks with regional partners.
The announcement came hours after US President Donald Trump declared that his administration was recognizing Jerusalem as the capital and that he had instructed the US State Department to prepare to move its embassy from Tel Aviv. Trump made no distinction between East or West Jerusalem in his declaration.
“The Czech Republic currently, before the peace between Israel and Palestine is signed, recognizes Jerusalem to be in fact the capital of Israel in the borders of the demarcation line from 1967,” the country’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
However, the ministry noted that “the Czech Republic together with other EU member states, following the EU Foreign Affairs Council Conclusions, considers Jerusalem to be the future capital of both states, meaning the State of Israel and the future State of Palestine. The Ministry can start considering moving of the Czech embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem only based on results of negotiations with key partners in the region and in the world.”
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