Clashes, condemnation on US shift – Protests seen to subside

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ABBAS, RELIGIOUS LEADERS CANCEL MEETINGS WITH PENCE

RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories, Dec 9, (Agencies): Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas will refuse to meet US Vice-President Mike Pence later this month following Washington’s controversial policy shift on Jerusalem, an Abbas aide said on Saturday, as protests gripped the Palestinian territories for a third straight day. Retaliatory Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip killed two Hamas militants before dawn, as unrest simmered over President Donald Trump’s controversial declaration of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. A total of four people have now been killed and dozens wounded since Trump announced the move, which drew criticism from every other member of the UN Security Council at an emergency meeting on Friday. “There will be no meeting with the vice-president of America in Palestine,” Abbas’s diplomatic adviser Majdi al- Khaldi told AFP.

“The United States has crossed all the red lines with the Jerusalem decision,” he added. Egypt’s Coptic Pope Tawadros II also cancelled a meeting with Pence with the church saying it “declines to receive” him in protest at Trump’s announcement which failed to take into account the “feelings of millions” of Arabs. That decision came a day after Egypt’s top Muslim cleric, Ahmed al-Tayeb who heads Al-Azhar, also scrapped plans to meet the US vice-president over the “unjust and unfair American decision on Jerusalem”. There were fresh clashes on Saturday as Palestinian protesters in the occupied West Bank hurled stones at Israeli troops, who responded with tear gas, rubber bullets and live rounds.

Israeli air strikes in Gaza killed two Palestinian gunmen on Saturday after rockets were fired from the enclave, in violence that erupted over Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Gaza militants launched at least three rockets towards Israeli towns from the Gaza Strip — which is controlled by the Islamist group Hamas — after dark on Friday. The day had been declared a “day of rage” by Palestinian factions protesting against Trump’s announcement on Wednesday. “IAF (Israeli Air Force) aircraft targeted four facilities belonging to the Hamas terror organization in the Gaza Strip: two weapons manufacturing sites, a weapons warehouse, a military compound,” the Israeli military said in a statement.

Confrontation
A Hamas source confirmed the two men killed in the predawn air strikes belonged to the group, which has urged Palestinians to keep up the confrontation with Israeli forces. Palestinian protests on Saturday were far less intense on than on previous days. About 60 Palestinian youths threw stones at Israeli soldiers across the Gaza-Israel border and the health ministry said one bystander was wounded by Israeli gunfire. In the West Bank city of Bethlehem, Palestinians set fire to tyres and threw stones at Israeli troops, who used tear gas.

In East Jerusalem about 60 people demonstrated near the walled Old City, where paramilitary border police and officers on horseback tried to disperse the crowd with tear gas. On Friday, thousands of Palestinians took to the streets in protest and two Palestinians were killed in clashes with Israeli troops on the Gaza border. Scores more were wounded there and in the West Bank. Across the Arab and Muslim worlds, thousands more protesters had gathered to express solidarity. Trump’s reversal of decades of US policy has infuriated the Arab world and upset Western allies, who say the move is a blow to peace efforts and risks sparking more violence in the region. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Friday the United States could no longer broker peace talks.

Restart
Trump’s adviser and sonin- law, Jared Kushner, is leading efforts to restart the longstalled Israeli-Palestinian talks, efforts that so far have shown little progress. A senior United Arab Emirates (UAE) official said on Saturday that Trump’s move was a boon to radicals. “These issues are a gift to radicalism. Radicals and extremists will use that to fan the language of hate,” Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash said at the Manama Dialogue security conference in Bahrain. The status of Jerusalem has been one of the biggest obstacles to a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians for generations.

Israel considers all of Jerusalem to be its capital. Palestinians want the eastern part of the city as the capital of a future independent state of their own. Most countries consider East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed after capturing it in the 1967 Middle East War, to be occupied territory. It includes the Old City, home to sites considered holy to Muslims, Jews and Christians alike. For decades, Washington, like most of the rest of the international community, held back from recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, saying its status should be determined as part of the Palestinian- Israeli peace process.

Trump also said on Wednesday he was starting the process of moving the United States embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The Trump administration argues that the peace process has become moribund, and outdated policies need to be jettisoned for the sides in the conflict to make progress.

The Arab League’s Permanent Committee on Human Rights said on Saturday that US president’s recent decision on Jerusalem would fuel and escalate violence, including promoting terrorism in the region, and threatens world and security peace. The head of the committee, Amjad Shamout, strongly condemned the decision by Trump to move the US embassy to Jerusalem and recognize it as the capital of Israeli occupation. Shamout noted that such decision contradicts with international principles of human rights, the Geneva Convention, international law, resolutions of international legitimacy and the right of Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims, and to the sanctity of Islamic and Christian religious sanctities.

“The Trump decision is irresponsible and unwise and undermines the chances for peace between the Palestinian and Israeli sides, fueling feelings of anger and hatred, increasing the cycle of violence in the region and the world and threatening the security and stability of the region,” Shamout added. He stressed that Trump’s unilateral decision is “unacceptable” and reflects only US fanaticism, which reinforces radicalism approach and extremism in the region and the world. One by one, 14 members of the UN Security Council spoke out against Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel at an emergency meeting on Friday, some with regret and some with anger at the 15th member, the United States. It wasn’t the first time that the US stood alone in defending its close ally, Israel, in the UN’s most powerful body. Over decades, it has vetoed many council resolutions it viewed as harmful to Israel. But this was a rare rebuke for an action the United States took that in the eyes of the rest of the council and most of the world clearly violates UN resolutions and decisions that Jerusalem is an issue to be resolved by Israel and the Palestinians in peace negotiations on a two-state solution.

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