JFJFP

December 9, 2017

Sarah Benton

Tags: jewish response trump, trump proclamation

This posting has these items:
1) JC: Trump’s Jerusalem policy shift thrills Israelis — but at what cost?, even the JC asks – but what the Palestinians? ;
2) Guardian: Donald Trump’s Jerusalem statement is an act of diplomatic arson, no two ways about it, from Jonathan Freedland;
3) +972: Explained: What Trump’s Jerusalem declaration will and won’t do lawyer Daniel Seidemann runs through the consequences;
4) Haaretz: The Jerusalem Powder Keg: How Much Will Trump’s Gamble Cost and Will Israel Defuse It, Amos Harel says recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital was overdue but Trump did it, not out of love for Israel but so he could say “they only talked, I did it”. And so the Arab population is reduced to a meaningless mass;
5) Haaretz: Trump Handed Netanyahu a Victory in the Battle to Crush Palestinian Nationalism, Aluf Benn says both Trump and Netanyahu are masters of the symbolic and ignoring the Palestinians is very symbolic;
6) WP: Trump’s actions could rip Jerusalem apart, Gershom Gorenberg says Jerusalem is a symbol for most people; for those who live there it’s a mixed, living, city;
7) National Interest: Jerusalem and the Follies of Trump’s Embrace, Daniel Levy asks ‘why now’ and answers ‘it’s more about the mid-West than the mid-East’;
8- Forward: Trump’s Jerusalem Move Is A Ploy To Protect Jared Kushner, one of the best pieces, by Yossi Alpher;
9) Forward: Announcement A Missed Opportunity, loyal former US ambassador to Israel says he’s ‘uncertain’;
10) CounterPunch: Jerusalem, Partition, Justice and Peace;

This is my proclamation: President Trump holds up the verbal expression of his decision to formally recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and to relocate the U.S. Embassy to that city. Photo by Jim Lo Scalzo/European Pressphoto Agency-EFE

Trump’s Jerusalem policy shift thrills Israelis — but at what cost?

Wednesday’s US policy shift reduced the Palestinians to a sideshow

By Anshel Pfeffer, Jewish Chronicle
December 06, 2017

“My announcement today marks the beginning of a new approach to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians,” US President Donald Trump said as he began his address on Wednesday in the White House.

For once, he totally delivered on his words.

The Trump Proclamation on recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel had everything Israeli governments have dreamed of hearing in the White House, and never imagined they would.

It adopted all the talking-points long used by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Jerusalem’s historic centrality to the Jewish people, with barely a passing nod to any Palestinian claims on the city or the land.

It detached the issue of Jerusalem from the broader picture of the diplomatic process. It mentioned none of the central tenets of US foreign policy stretching back decades. There was no mention of the 1967 borders and nothing about the settlements.

The proclamation could easily have been written by Mr Netanyahu’s veteran aide Ron Dermer, the current Israeli ambassador to the US. To some extent it probably was, as Mr Dermer currently enjoys the best access of any diplomat to the White House and the president’s inner circle.

It is, all in all, an incredible diplomatic coup for Mr Netanyahu.

The only concession to diplomatic orthodoxy was Mr Trump’s admission that the two-state solution was still a viable option, if both sides wanted it to be.

The one sentiment …shared this week by every Palestinian in Jerusalem was a feeling of abandonment

But one great question mark looms over Mr Trump’s speech. How does he expect to square the overwhelmingly pro-Israel tone of his speech with his stated aspiration to achieve the “greatest deal of all” — a peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians?

Sceptics will take this as proof that the president was never serious about it. There is, however, a view in Jerusalem and Washington that Mr Trump is exercising his own characteristic style of brinkmanship, proving to both sides that he is willing to ditch the established consensus.

So far that has been demonstrated towards the Palestinians. But there may be elements of the much talked about Trump plan that are far less palatable to the Israeli right wing.

But will the Palestinians now even be willing to come to the table and negotiate? The big unknown is the Palestinian reaction. In the short-term, will we see a violent backlash in Jerusalem and the West Bank? And further down the road, will the Palestinian leadership agree to the Trump administration acting as brokers in the diplomatic process?

Fatah and other Palestinian organisations announced three “days of rage”. As the JC went to press, the rage has largely been in the statements by Palestinian spokespeople. This could be partly due to the fact that the Trump hoopla coincided with the first day of real winter in Jerusalem and the West Bank: demonstrations in the Middle East don’t usually kick off in heavy rain.

Israeli police officers try to remove a Palestinian flag from Palestinian women protesting outside the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem Old City, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017. Photo by AP
See also Analysis Trump handed Netanyahu a victory in the battle to crush Palestinian nationalism

Israel’s security chiefs have prepared contingency plans for possible escalation on the ground and are looking at Friday, following the noon prayers at the Al Aqsa mosques, as a potential moment when riots could start. The current intelligence assessments are that the Palestinian leadership is not yet prepared to relaunch the Intifada and there is scant appetite for it among the wider Palestinian public.

But the one sentiment that seemed to be shared this week by every Palestinian in Jerusalem was a feeling of abandonment by the international community and by the Arab World.

No one doubted President Trump’s announcement could have been made without the tacit agreement of the leaders of Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

The clearest conclusion from the US policy shift is that the Palestinian issue is at the lowest it has been on the global priorities list for decades, with the Palestinians reduced to a sideshow.

The ‘nuclear core’ , Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount, Old City, Jerusalem

Donald Trump’s Jerusalem statement is an act of diplomatic arson

The US president’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel turns a naked flame on the single most combustible issue in the conflict

By Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian
December 06, 2017

Not content with taking the US to the brink of nuclear conflict with North Korea, Donald Trump is now set to apply his strategy of international vandalism to perhaps the most sensitive geopolitical hotspot in the world. With a speech scheduled for later today that’s expected to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and reaffirm a pledge to move the US embassy to the city, he is walking into a bone-dry forest with a naked flame.

For the status of Jerusalem is the most intractable issue in what is often described as the world’s most intractable conflict. It is the issue that has foiled multiple efforts at peacemaking over several decades. Both Israelis and Palestinians insist that Jerusalem must be the capital of their states, present and future, and that that status is non-negotiable.

But it’s not just important to them. The Old City of Jerusalem contains the holiest site in Judaism and the third holiest mosque in Islam, to say nothing of its enormous significance to Christians, meaning that even the slightest move there is felt by billions. It is a place where diplomats have learned to tread with extreme care. There is a reason why no US administration, no matter how pro-Israel, has changed its policy toward the city in the nearly 70 years since Israel’s founding.

But here comes Trump, oblivious to precedent and indeed history – even in a place where history is a matter of life and death – stomping through this delicate thicket, trampling over every sensitivity. The risk is obvious, with every Arab government – including those loyal to Washington – now issuing sharp warnings on the perils of this move, almost all of them using the same word: “dangerous”.

Photographer Hazem Bader of AFP catches a soldier spoiling for a fight in Hebron after Friday prayers, December 7th.

Let us be clear. Most advocates of an eventual two-state solution believe the only way to resolve the Jerusalem issue is for it to serve as the capital of both states: East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine, West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Then, and only then, would be the right moment to start moving embassies and issuing statements of recognition. Until that day, any act that pre-empts an agreement between the two parties on the city’s future is reckless and needlessly incendiary.

Recall that the second intifada – which turned into a bloody two or more years of death for Israelis at the hands of Palestinian suicide bombers, and death for Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli military – started after a 45-minute visit in late 2000 by the then leader of the Israeli opposition, Ariel Sharon, to the place that represents the nuclear core of this most radioactive conflict, the site Muslims call the Haram al-Sharif and Jews call the Temple Mount. Bear that in mind when you hear the Palestinian ambassador to London say that Trump’s move amounts to “declaring war on 1.5 billion Muslims”.

Why is Trump doing it? Perhaps he wants to show that he’s honouring his campaign pledges: now, along with his tax cut for the rich and his travel ban from mainly Muslim countries, he can tick the box marked Jerusalem. He said he would do it, and now he’s doing it, and to hell with the consequences. That’s a style of politics his base – including those Christian evangelicals hawkish on Israel – seems to like.

The rest of the world will draw some comfort from the fact that no immediate move of the embassy is imminent; that it may not even happen before Trump’s term expires in January 2021. Perhaps this will be like Trump’s break from the Paris accords on climate change – more symbolic than concrete.

But that is to forget that in the Israel-Palestine conflict, symbols matter. Which is why other world leaders, and senior US politicians, need to close ranks in saying this act is wrong and does not speak for them. They need to signal that a saner policy might prevail once Trump has gone. The trouble is that by then, given the way violence in that region can spread and escalate, it might be too late.

Demonstration in Rawalpindi, Pakistan against Trump’s Jerusalem proclamation. [Widely circulated as a photo of Palestinians] Photo by Fareed Khan/AP

Explained: What Trump’s Jerusalem declaration will and won’t do

Jerusalem expert, activist, and attorney Daniel Seidemann talks to +972 about the short- and long-term ramifications of Trump’s declaration on Jerusalem, from prospects of violence to the void left behind as Washington disqualifies itself as broker in the Israel-Palestine political process.

By Joshua Leifer, +972
December 07, 2017

Daniel Seidemann is a leading expert on the politics of Jerusalem, an attorney, and founder of Terrestrial Jerusalem, an Israeli NGO that tracks Israeli policies and settlement growth in the city. He served in an informal advisory capacity to the final status negotiations about Jerusalem in 2000-2001, under Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

I met Seidemann in his Jerusalem office Thursday morning to discuss the ramifications of U.S President Donald Trump’s announcement the night before formally recognizing Jerusalem as the capital Israel, and declaring his intention to move the American embassy there.

The following has been edited for length, +972.

What is the most common misconception about Trump’s announcement recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel?

The most common misconception among Israelis is that it’s good for the Jews. And the fetishism: you have thousands of people in the bible belt of the United States posting their hopes and dreams about moving the embassy. The Jerusalem Municipality is having public dancing to celebrate, emulating November 29, 1947 with the approval of the UN Partition Plan. It’s grotesque, vulgar, and ridiculous.

Having said that, I think most Israelis are pleased: ‘We’ve gotten rid of this anti-Semite, Obama. We have arrived.’ That that is a very misdirected interpretation of what the genuine Israeli national interest is. But Jerusalem is probably one of the most manipulate-able, manipulated subjects around. So, most Israelis are very pleased over an event that will do nothing beneficial to either Israel, Jerusalem, or its residents.

Can you expand on that?

It has basically led to the collapse of the existing structure which governed political processes between Israelis and Palestinians — that is, the American stewardship of these political processes. Trump didn’t invent that. The United States was never really a fair broker. Having said that, this is now the death certificate. The United States has disqualified itself from any significant role as broker in Israel-Palestine political processes, and there is no replacement.

To a certain extent, looking ahead at the trajectory of this conflict, it’s like being in a vehicle where there are no brakes, the steering wheel is gone, the laws of traffic are not clear, there’s no destination, and it’s being driven by an adolescent with a learner’s permit and a personality disorder. That’s good for Israel?

Nir Hasson wrote in Haaretz yesterday that historically there has been an incubation period for major diplomatic events turning into violence or uprisings on the ground. Every analyst has been predicting a third Intifada for years now. Is there more potential for pressure building up now than it did over Al Aqsa issues in recent years?

There are the triggers of violence and there are the underlying causes of violence. The triggers usually explain why violence erupts. The underlying causes explain why the violence is maintained over time. Almost invariably, there is one issue that triggers the outbreak of violence in and around Jerusalem: the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif. Geopolitical issues usually do not trigger the violence.

Preparing for trouble in Bethlehem, Saturday December 9th. Photo by EPA.

Having said that, there are the broader circumstances that are more or less amenable to the outbreak of violence. It is not an accident that the Second Intifada broke out two and a half months after the collapse of the Camp David summit. It’s not an accident that the latest round of violence in 2014 erupted a few months after the collapse of the Kerry talks. It’s the hope factor. When expectations rise and then are dashed, things become very dangerous.

Even when expectations don’t rise, the absence of a direction — when kids have nothing to look forward to — it becomes a very dangerous situation. Since July of 2014, Israel has arrested more than 10 percent of all of the Palestinian boys [in Jerusalem] between the ages of 12 and 18 in clashes with the police. That’s a staggering number. Why? They don’t have a future. The Palestinian Authority doesn’t give a damn about them. They’re treated as the enemy by Israel. They’re adrift, living without any sense of direction or potential for addressing the grievances of occupation is very destabilizing.

When you hear, ‘it can’t go on this way’ — sure it can. And it usually does. But that’s when you take the political pulse. When you take the historical pulse, what we’re describing is not sustainable over time. This disequilibrium will right itself in one of two ways: with a serious political process to address core grievances, or with a catastrophic event, usually the outbreak of violence. That may not happen in three months but it probably won’t take six years.

Does Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel bring us any closer to the recognition of East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital, by anyone?

The short answer is no and the long answer is no.

You’ve warned about building in E1 for a long time. Before Trump’s speech, there was a wave of eviction orders against Palestinians living in that area. What is the risk of Trump’s announcement emboldening settlement construction and the displacement of Palestinians in and around Jerusalem?

Netanyahu is defiant as never before. Netanyahu always was bluster, but he was usually risk averse. With the settlements, he is acting as though he can get away with virtually anything, and the world is proving him to be largely correct.

There is a method to these policies — they are not random — and this is moving in for the kill on creating a one-state reality that will not allow for the creation of a border between Israel and a viable Palestinian state.

The United States itself is not aware of how many bad things the United States prevented simply by being there. There were many occasions in which Netanyahu said: ‘I can’t, the Americans won’t let me.’ There were times when things were leaked to me so I would tell friends in Washington so that Netanyahu would be stopped because he didn’t want to volunteer to stop; he wanted somebody to do it for him. That period is over.

What about the effects here, on the ground? Or will things go on as they have been?

In Amoz Oz’s novella, The Hill of Evil Counsel, he says, and I’m paraphrasing: when you hear ‘the eternal Jerusalem’ and things of that nature, the stones of Jerusalem burst out laughing. The stones of Jerusalem have been snickering for the last 24 hours. The notion that this hollow gesture is going to have an immediate impact on the daily lives of Israelis and Palestinians is absolutely ridiculous. Until, or unless, there is a major destabilizing event. Possible, but it’s certainly not the routine.

Joshua Leifer is an associate editor at +972 Magazine.

This is not a peace-keeping force. Photo outside Damascus Gate in Jerusalem’s Old City by Thomas Coex/AFP

The Jerusalem Powder Keg: How Much Will Trump’s Gamble Cost and Will Israel Defuse It

Israeli defence establishment braces for violence after Trump’s Jerusalem speech ■ Last wave of violence was quelled through restraint, which may be harder to do this time around

By Amos Harel, Haaretz premium
December 09 , 2017

The American recognition of the city as Israel’s capital this week arouses mixed feelings. The declaration is historically justified, even when coming from the mouth of a repulsive individual such as President Donald Trump.

Prime Minister Netanyahu chalked up a substantial diplomatic achievement this week, particularly since the American declaration paved the way for other countries to follow suit. These apparently include the Czech Republic and the Philippines, which may also move their embassies to Jerusalem.

This is also a political achievement for Netanyahu since none of his rivals or partners from any party to the right of Meretz dare warn of the results of such a decision. The hostile responses in the Arab and Muslim world, followed by the almost automatic panic among the international community, reflect more than the sensitive religious charge associated with any move made in Jerusalem. On a deeper level, these responses express the fact that Israel’s existence in the region is not accepted by Palestinians, perhaps not by all Arabs.

The efforts made by radio broadcasters, let alone by cabinet and Knesset members, to bestow a celebratory or official aura to the declaration sounded forced. First, because it’s quite clear that Trump’s considerations are unrelated to his boundless love for the eternal capital of the Jewish people. It seems that the president did what he did since it’s important for him to look better than all his predecessors in the White House (“they only talked, I did it”), and because he doesn’t like being told what he can and can’t do.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, because the potential implications of Trump’s declaration are already felt in the air here.

There is something almost condescending in the basic assumption made in Israel and the West, that Arabs and Palestinians are a huge and shapeless human conglomerate (“the street”), which responds to diplomatic manoeuvres only with enraged, violent and totally uncontrollable reflexes. And yet, the chances that a widespread protest will erupt here, possibly ending in bloodshed, do not seem unlikely.

Hamas called for a protest intifada on Thursday, certainly as part of its competition with the Palestinian Authority in leading the unfolding of events. The defence establishment in Israel, which must prepare for the worst case scenario, has decided to move several army battalions to the West Bank and to reinforce police forces in Jerusalem. The next few days and weeks will show the results of Trump’s gamble, to which Netanyahu was a probable accomplice, at least by knowing of it in advance.

Jerusalem has been a powder keg historically, setting fire to the region on several previous occasions, from the Temple Mount riots in 1990 and the Western Wall tunnel disturbances in 1996 to the second intifada in 2000 (following Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount) and the short wave of terror attacks in the fall of 2014. This coming Saturday will coincidentally mark the 30th anniversary of the violent and harsh events which erupted under other circumstances, namely the outbreak of the first intifada.

Closures and sieges

The possibility of a violent outburst – in Jerusalem, the territories and possibly even among Israeli Arabs (it’s hard to imagine Sheikh Raed Salah missing an opportunity like this one to incite to violence), requires Israeli political leaders and the security forces to undertake determined yet judicious action. In a lecture at the Israel Democracy Institute on Wednesday, Chief-of-Staff Gadi Eisenkot described the manner in which Israel managed to contain the lone wolf attacks, which began in Jerusalem and the West Bank in October 2015. Eisenkot admitted that it took several months until a response was formulated to this new form of terror, which had no organizers or commanders. Subsequently, he said, a combination of detailed and precise intelligence, a determined response on the ground and a policy of abstention from widespread collective punishment managed to gradually reduce the level of flames [our emphases, postings editor].

Palestinian protesters taking cover during clashes with Israeli troops after a demonstration against Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, near Beit El, December 7, 2017. Photo by Abbas Momani/AFP

“We avoid imposing closures and sieges” he added. “It doesn’t serve the purpose of carrying out the mission, even if the acts of terror are infuriating and make our blood boil.” The chief of staff told of a senior Palestinian official who met Israeli intelligence officials shortly after things had calmed down somewhat. He said that this person had said that the violence didn’t deteriorate into a full-blown intifada two years ago since Palestinians in the territories saw that the Israel Defence Forces “were conducting themselves rationally, distinguishing between assailants and the general population.”

En route to the IDI, Eisenkot toured Hebron to view the IDF’s preparations for possible escalation. According to the data he was shown, there have been 56 Palestinian attempts to commit stabbing attacks in the city so far this year. Three resulted in casualties; the other 53 perpetrators were arrested en route to committing the attack, without the soldiers ever opening fire.

This compares to 39 attempted attacks, of which 17 were successful, in 2016. The sharp improvement is thanks to different arrangements at IDF checkpoints and new technology.
Eisenkot’s speech sounded like a blueprint for the way Israel should deal with the next wave, if it erupts. If there is violence in Jerusalem, the Jerusalem police branch and Commissioner Roni Alsheich will have to deal with it. (It will be interesting to see his relations with the Prime Minister’s bureau in this context, given the existing tension around Netanyahu’s investigations.)

There is an experienced chain of command under the chief of staff in the territories, led by Central Command head Maj. Gen. Roni Numa and the IDF’s commander in the territories, Brig. Gen. Eran Niv. Numa carried out army policies on the ground during the last terror wave. Niv knows the area well from his term as a battalion commander at the height of the second intifada as the officer who finally overcame the terrorists during the serious attack on the “worshippers’ trail” in Hebron in 2002, as a regional brigade commander in the West Bank. Previously, he was the operations’ officer of the Judea and Samaria division, under then-division commander Eisenkot, at a time when the army and the Shin Bet security service managed to block the wave of suicide bombers. This is a wise and prudent group of officers, which has already experienced and seen everything in the territories.

Part of what has changed in recent years relates to the reaction of the Israeli public. Eisenkot touched on this briefly in his lecture at the Democracy Institute, but it’s clear that controversy over rules of engagement and especially the Elor Azaria trial greatly impacted the public’s relationship with the IDF. A campaign is now required to assuage public anger, which was stoked by numerous politicians. Ultimately the chief of staff, the military advocate general, military judges and finally president Rivlin withstood the pressure. However, this will have consequences in the attitude of the extreme right towards the chief of staff, and certainly towards the president.

TV Channel 10’s investigative reporting programme HaMakor had an interview this week with retired judge Zvi Segal, who was the driving spirit behind the rejection of the appeal of Elor Azaria, the soldier who shot and killed an incapacitated terrorist. In referring to the trial, Segal assailed the chain of command on the ground in Hebron during the incident. How was it that none of the commanders rebuked Azaria or yelled at him right after he shot the terrorist, who was lying on the ground, wounded and incapacitated?

“To my sorrow and regret there was silence,” said Segal. “The fact that none of the commanders or soldiers expressed their shock at this deed leads us to believe, God forbid, that someone thought that this was what should be done, and that’s very worrying.” If the apathy shown by commanders and soldiers after the shooting indicates anything, he added, “a thorough overview is required of what is permitted and what is forbidden.”

right-wing social media keep creating blacklists of ‘the extreme left’ and ‘anti-Zionists’ which include IDF generals and officers of state

When Eisenkot was on his way to give the lecture there was a temporary storm on the internet, created by right-wing tweeters and bloggers, who noted that the chief of staff was about to appear at “a meeting of the extreme left.” This is a constant method of creating McCarthy-like blacklists, that began with attacks on the New Israel Fund during the last decade. Every liberal or leftist organization is immediately labeled as “extreme left” and anti-Zionist, and an attempt is made to deter representatives of state institutions, from the state prosecution to the army, from co-operating with such dangerous traitors. Eisenkot ignored this pressure as did Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, who appeared at the conference the next day. Both of them seem to have been marked by some right-wing media, who attack them every time an opportunity crops up.

Netanyahu’s logic

In the midst of expanding corruption investigations against him and his associates, Netanyahu still holds a strong card in the public arena. This card derives its power from the trauma that still shapes political consciousness in Israel, more than a decade after it ended. This was the horrific wave of suicide bombings during the Oslo negotiations and the second intifada. It seems that Netanyahu is still perceived by many, to this day, as the only person with sufficiently adequate security and political experience needed to contend with a war or another murderous terror wave.

The lack of experience among his competitors Yair Lapid and Avi Gabbay (and on the right, Naftali Bennett), works against them. When on the scales one puts forbidden cigars and champagne bottles on one side with exploding buses on the other, there are many voters whose security anxieties are of a higher priority than the maintaining of orderly governance and a cleaning of the stables.

In Netanyahu’s frequent speeches, as with his video clips about “things you won’t hear about in the media,” shown on his Facebook page a lot recently, the two are almost identical – the prime minister emphasizes that the country is enjoying unprecedented prosperity. He describes Israel as a shining beacon of technology, science and military intelligence, with other countries striving to learn from it, thereby dispelling all the prophecies of doom about diplomatic isolation awaiting it due to its continued holding on to the territories.

Netanyahu’s arguments rest on three assumptions. First, that his chemistry with Trump will protect Israel from all harm. Second, that Israel’s confluence of interests with Sunni states and its reported behind-the-scenes security cooperation with them have pushed the Palestinian issue far down on their agenda. Third, that Netanyahu’s close ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin have prevented Israel from clashing with Russia’s air force in Syria and will continue to help Israel protect its security interests up north.

This analysis was ostensibly bolstered by Trump’s announcement on Wednesday. But recent events actually pose huge questions about Netanyahu’s assumptions.

First, Israel still doesn’t know for sure what Trump’s Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative will look like or what compromises he will demand of Israel to allow him to say he advanced the peace process.

Second, recent reports on special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s investigation show that he isn’t looking only into Trump staffers’ links with Russia, but also into moves they concocted with Israel prior to a UN Security Council vote on the settlements in the waning days of the Obama Administration. Shopworn accusations that Jerusalem runs Washington behind the scenes may well resurface with redoubled force now, especially since Trump’s peace team contains so many Jews.

Home-made battle equipment, outside Ramallah on Decermber 8th. Photo by Mohamad Torokman/Reuters

Closer to home, Trump’s announcement on Jerusalem could reignite tension between Israel and the Palestinians, thereby affecting one of Netanyahu’s main achievements – the long months of security quiet with the Palestinians. Israel’s covert and open ties with Sunni states, especially Jordan and Saudi Arabia, will also be sorely tested by the vehement Arab opposition to Trump’s announcement.

Up north, neither Iran’s determination to consolidate its position in southern Syria nor the consequent airstrikes attributed to Israel has thus far provoked any visible Russian response. But if this escalatory trend continues, Israel and Iran may clash. Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer said in an interview with Politico this week that war in the north, especially in Syria, is becoming more likely. This raises doubts about whether Netanyahu’s relationship with Putin is doing anything to help Israel achieve its goals against Iran, and especially whether it’s helping to prevent war.

Israeli police officers stand guard as Palestinian women protest outside the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem, Thursday, December 7, 2017. Since the Al Aqsa protest last summer the engagement of women in protests has increased. Photo by Ariel Schalit/ AP

Trump Handed Netanyahu a Victory in the Battle to Crush Palestinian Nationalism

U.S. President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem was a gift for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his real fight – the one against Palestinian nationalism

By Aluf Benn, Haaretz Analysis, premium
December 08, 2017

Benjamin Netanyahu’s critics like to say he has no strategy and no policy other than his political survival. But they’re wrong. The prime minister has a clear goal that he has pursued for many years now: dismantling the Palestinian national movement.

Netanyahu sees this movement as an uncompromising enemy of Zionism, and he sees the relationship between the two national movements as a zero-sum game. When one gains, the other loses.

On Wednesday, Netanyahu racked up an important victory in his battle against the Palestinians, with President Donald Trump’s announcement that the United States recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and will begin preparations for moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to the holy city.

Trump didn’t give the Palestinians anything in return, and even weakened America’s commitment to the eventual establishment of a Palestinian state. His speech sounded as if it could have been written by Netanyahu and his ambassador in Washington, Ron Dermer, and it presumably was closely coordinated with them.

Netanyahu is a man of ideas and symbols far more than decisions and actions. In his view, it’s much more important to have Jerusalem recognized as Israel’s capital than to build thousands of additional homes in the settlements.

He has dominated Israel’s agenda for years now through catchy slogans that then become the basis of the media debate (“leftists have forgotten what it means to be Jews,” “the rock of our existence,” “they are AFRAID,” “the fat man and the thin man,” “life itself,” “the Arabs are going to the polls in droves,” “there will be nothing because there is nothing”). Even his ostensible rivals who want to replace him parrot his positions unquestioningly and march down the ideological trail he has laid.

Trump, a master marketer and sloganeer, fits Netanyahu like a glove. Like Netanyahu, he is productive and creative when attacked by the media or the public.

This time, Trump extricated his Israeli friend from great trouble. The clumsy battle to rein in the police (via a bill barring them from publishing their recommendations on whether to indict) made Netanyahu plummet in the polls, and the criminal suspicions against his political operator, David Bitan, for the first time sparked hints of rebellion against the prime minister in his Likud party, though at this stage, only off the record.

But then along came the headlines about the historic day and Trump’s speech, and the corruption suspect returned to his role as a statesman and strategist who waxes lyrical about Jewish history, the Bible and the Holocaust.

Netanyahu does have an excellent understanding of the international power game. He sees America reducing its involvement in the Middle East and refocusing its diplomatic and military efforts on Asia, just like in the 1950s and ’60s.

This process can be explained by a glance at the chart of falling oil prices, and also by the last decade’s failed wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which brought the region not stability and quiet but bloody chaos. American public opinion has had enough, and the last two presidents – Barack Obama and Trump – have gradually folded the American flag in the region.

The Americans handed Syria over to Russian and Iranian control, at the expense of two long-standing American allies, Turkey and Israel. Both countries had benefited in recent years from the collapse of the Syrian army and the weakening of the Assad regime, but must now cope with Vladimir Putin’s air force and Iran’s Shi’ite militias.

Israel received double compensation: presidential recognition of Jerusalem as its capital and the promise that the West Bank will remain under Israeli control for the foreseeable future, as long as Israel shuns blatant steps like annexing territory or harming Muslim holy sites on the Temple Mount. Turkey didn’t get anything, which explains its furious reaction to Trump’s speech.

Netanyahu knows that Israel’s existence and security depend on U.S. support, so he fears an American withdrawal. But he also knows that Israel can’t stop this process or even delay it, so instead he’s trying to mine it for opportunities to improve Israel’s position in its uncompromising conflict with the dying Palestinian national movement. Trump’s speech on Wednesday was just such an opportunity.

Jerusalem welcomes Israelis and Americans: highlight statement by Jerusalem city council. Photo taken Dec 6th by Oren Ziv, ActiveStills

Trump’s actions could rip Jerusalem apart

By Gershom Gorenberg, Washington Post
December 06, 2017

On Tuesday evening Jerusalem time, 24 hours before President Trump’s expected declaration of a dramatic change in American policy toward the city, the local U.S. consulate emailed a warning to staffers.

Translated from diplomatese, it said: “Things could blow up here. Stay away from the Old City. If you absolutely have to go, jack up security.”

The contrast was drastic. Symbolically, the president was saying that his decision to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem was merely a long-overdue affirmation of an established principle. The consulate was declaring that Trump’s actions could rip the real city apart.

The consulate’s message underlined something basic about this city. The relationship between symbols and reality here is even more fraught than the relations between Israelis and Palestinians.

Because it’s often forgotten in the shouted international debates, let me stress: Jerusalem is an actual city of apartments, asphalt and noise, where actual people live — 865,000 of us. A bit less than two-thirds are Israelis, a bit more than one-third are Palestinians. We get stuck in traffic jams on the way to work. We worry about our kids’ futures. You can go weeks without remembering that Jerusalem is a name with more resonance than, say, Denver.

Politicians, Israeli and Palestinian, make declarations about Jerusalem that are so simplistic as to be fictional. Yes, it’s Israel’s capital, quite without any need for international recognition. But 50 years of Israeli declarations haven’t made Jerusalem united.

In many ways, the Arab city is the premium seating area of the occupation — better than the rest of the West Bank, but still occupied. Almost all East Jerusalem Palestinians have a legal status equivalent to non-citizen immigrants in the city of their birth.

Then again, Palestinian statements suggesting that East Jerusalem could easily be re-divided from West Jerusalem along the pre-1967 line are also predicated on ignoring real life. It’s not just that 210,000 Israelis live in neighborhoods built across that border. East Jerusalem Palestinians have told me, half arguing with themselves, that the present is untenable but that a Palestinian state could cost them the right to work in Israel, and to collect the Israeli National Insurance (social security) benefits for which they’ve paid their whole lives. There’s a growing cottage industry in Hebrew classes for East Jerusalem teens who want to study in Israeli universities — just one sign of the delicate interconnections between the Arab and Jewish cities.

The strangest thing about the tangible city of Jerusalem, though, is that it apparently exists only because of symbolism. It has no port, no river. It’s on the edge of a desert. The ancient water supply was poor, the natural defences weak. The only resource it has ever had to sell is sanctity, dating back to even before the possibly mythical Solomon built a Temple here. Christianity and Islam both claimed to inherit Jerusalem’s holiness. For no logical reason, religions act as if owning Jerusalem proves their truth. Because of Jerusalem’s symbolism, the U.N. partition plan of 1947 ignored the right of self-government and self-determination of the people living there and designated it as an international city.

Jewish and Palestinian nationalism, in turn, act as the heirs of religion, and behave as if owning Jerusalem is vital to the truth of their narratives. They, too, ignore the real city’s messiness in their rhetoric.

Past Palestinian-Israeli peace efforts show that working out practical arrangements for dividing sovereignty while sharing the city will be incredibly complicated, and symbolic arrangements for the holy sites will be more difficult yet. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is too stubborn, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is too weak, to negotiate such a deal. Trump lacks the savvy needed for the essential American role as broker.

Consistent U.S. policy until yesterday was that American recognition of the city as a capital would await an agreement between Israelis and Palestinians on its final status. This also had symbolic value. It said the current situation isn’t final. It served as a promissory note for serious negotiations, with the United States as honest broker. It underwrote a sliver of hope for Palestinians in the city. The U.S. position allowed the Palestinian Authority and Muslim countries such as Turkey not to treat the Israeli stance as final. It reminded Israelis not to completely believe their own declarations.

In his speech, Trump paid lip service to negotiations on the city’s final status. But as was totally predictable, his declaration was read by Israelis, Palestinians and others in the Middle East as an American endorsement of the Israeli government’s position on Jerusalem.

In response, Muslim countries will feel obligated to take sharper stands against Israeli control of East Jerusalem and the holy sites. Palestinians in East Jerusalem will feel pressed to oppose Israeli rule more forcefully. Whether or not violence erupts now, Trump has added to Palestinian despair, and despair increases the chance of an eruption. The real symbolism of Trump’s statement is that he couldn’t care less about the real city of Jerusalem.

Palestinians protest in the Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip on December 8, 2017 against US President Donald Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Photo by Mohammed Abed/ AFP

Jerusalem and the Follies of Trump’s Embrace

Even if events do not immediately spiral out of control, the president’s announcement will have heightened tensions and sown the seeds for future instability.

By Daniel Levy, the National Intrerest
December 06, 2017

Israelis today are feeling the love from Washington and bracing themselves for trouble. As President Donald Trump announces practical steps towards moving the U.S. Embassy to Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, he breaks with precedent in overwhelmingly embracing the Israeli government narrative of Jerusalem’s status.

Israel’s security establishment is preparing to contain the fallout. Given Palestinian outrage and the Israeli leadership’s predilection for provocation, over reaction, and collective punishment of Palestinians, this could get ugly. As the veteran Israeli commentator Orly Azulai notes in Israel’s leading circulation daily Yediot, “This is not a gift that shows affection for Israel … this is a powder keg being left on our doorstep … we are the ones that will pay the price.” Even if events do not immediately spiral out of control, the president’s announcement will have heightened tensions and sown the seeds for future instability.

That a speech initiated by the White House, not demanded by events, had to include a call for calm itself speaks volumes.

The Jerusalem announcement from Washington needs to be kept in perspective. The proximate cause of insecurity and violations of human rights and international law, the actual problem in other words, is Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians on the ground not the verbal hot air from Washington. But the former is sustained and given protective cover by the latter.

It is not at all clear that this U.S. initiative has been driven by Israel’s rightist government. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is of course not ideologically opposed to what the president is doing or saying, he will welcome it and declare victory. Trump’s words will also domestically empower Netanyahu at a moment of unprecedented weakness, born of the multiple corruption investigations being conducted against him alongside the heavy handed, legislatively problematic and borderline authoritarian manner of his response. But Trump’s announcement is not risk-free and the celebrations on the Israeli side of Jerusalem may prove to be hollow.

To be clear, Trump is not endangering his allies in Israel to the same degree as he is with the South Koreans. A pattern though may be emerging—this president could pose more of a threat to his allies than his adversaries.

This presidential initiative may well be the product of the hawkish, even extremist pro-Israel sympathies of his closest confidantes. It may also be designed to test how much regional leeway (especially regarding Israel) he can now claim given the extent the White House has deepened ties with certain Arab states, and in particular Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. In the most farfetched interpretations of this move, it has even been claimed that this lunge towards the Israeli side on Jerusalem can be used to create leverage and be constructively deployed if and when an American peace plan is presented. That is hogwash. If true, it displays a terrifying ignorance of the issues involved, the centrality of Jerusalem and the human dynamics of maintaining confidence and relationships in any mediation and peacemaking effort.

To understand the ‘why’ and the ‘why now’ of this move, one is probably better advised to visit the Breitbart website, which is proudly proclaiming ‘hallelujah’ in a banner homepage headline. Not unusually for American engagement on this issue, this is probably more about the mid-West than the mid-East. Trump’s overall political strategy has been all about keeping the Republican Party and Congress on board by solidifying support within his own domestic political base. This move will play well, very well, with a large swathe of the dispensationalist Evangelical Christian community as well as with the very small cohort of conservative American Jewish support he carries, especially the subset of that cohort known as Sheldon Adelson.

The question many experts have been pondering is how these considerations have trumped the traditional American national security interest argument whereby the price America pays for its indulgence of Israeli occupation practices, and its perpetuation of a grievance felt by Muslims and Arabs regarding Palestine, needs to be managed, not exacerbated. American policy on Israel/Palestine is a gift to radicalisation, and is consistently part of the extremist recruitment narrative from Bin Laden down.

CENTCOM chiefs have frequently and openly testified to how the handling of this issue can undermine American forces and security in the region and beyond. That entire trend is intensified when the focus becomes more narrowly that of Jerusalem.

However, for those arguments to have carried the day, one has to assume that this White House agrees with the premise that U.S. interests are best served by seeking to heal and improve relations with the Muslim world. But if your own political project and the project for America is to polarize, to deepen divisions, and especially to demonize Muslims and perhaps even use that clash to achieve other domestic political transformations then you might have an interest in fomenting trouble, in generating demonstrations where for instance American flags may be burned.

Undoubtedly this is a defeat for the Palestinians in the short term, but more precisely, this is a defeat for what was anyway a failed Palestinian approach, one in desperate need of change. The clarity which the Trump administration is offering the Palestinians with regards to how counterproductive it is to continue pursuing an American-led peace process, to continue neglecting the accumulation of Palestinian leverage, that clarity may end up being more of a cause of concern for Israel.

Trump’s Jerusalem Move Is A Ploy To Protect Jared Kushner

By Yossi Alpher, Forward
December 07, 2017

Yesterday, President Donald Trump did the incomprehensible: He recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Never have the divisions been more clear-cut. The entire Arab world and the rest of the international community have opposed, condemned or expressed grave concern about Trump’s Jerusalem recognition announcement. So did the American Jewish and Israeli peace camps.

All argued that the announcement would work to the detriment of any American-sponsored peace process.

Palestinian anguish was particularly acute: sacred space was being violated.

The right and centre of the Israeli political establishment, representing a large majority of Israelis, were delighted. Jerusalem has for thousands of years been the capital of the Jewish people. It has been modern-day Israel’s capital for nearly 70 years. Trump had finally stated the obvious and unmasked the world’s prolonged hypocrisy.

But one unanswered question that many have posed is why. Why now? What does Trump stand to gain from this declaration?

The question is especially acute when one realizes that when the smoke clears, all sides will see that nothing has changed on the ground. Trump pointedly delayed the opening of an American embassy in Jerusalem. If he so desired, he could open an embassy in Jerusalem in half an hour, merely by replacing the US consulate sign on the building on West Jerusalem’s Agron Street with one designating it an embassy. Instead, he deliberately set in progress a process that will take years.

True, unilateral US recognition seemingly alters the negotiating balance when it comes to discussing Jerusalem in final-status negotiations. Yet, ostensibly, so did the broad international recognition of a nonexistent “Palestinian state” in recent years. So what? After all, there are no negotiations. Even when there are (as in 2008 or 2013-14) the gaps between the two sides remain unbridgeable.

Now Trump is offering to “support the two-state solution if agreed to by both sides”? But that is precisely the dilemma: the two sides can’t agree. “The two-state solution is over”, declares the PLO’s Saeb Erekat in anguish in response to Trump. Erekat needed Trump’s Jerusalem declaration to realize this?

And that, I fear, is the real point of Trump’s December 6 speech. From everything we have been able to glean, the much ballyhooed Trump Middle East peace plan scheduled to be unveiled early in 2018 will be a total non-starter. It will be rejected by the Palestinians precisely because it does not deal with Jerusalem in the way they want (two capitals) and does not give them a state in anywhere near the entirety of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Instead it tries to buy Palestinian concessions with Saudi money. By now it should have dawned on Messrs. Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt, the vanguard of Trump’s vaunted peace team, that “economic peace” has never worked with Palestinians. This is definitely not an economic conflict.

Accordingly, Trump himself has nothing to lose and everything to gain by recognizing Israel’s capital. If the Palestinians respond by cutting peace process discussions, they are to blame, not Trump. They save him the dilemma of whitewashing failure sometime next year. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, too, would be happy to see Trump’s peace process initiative torpedoed by Palestinian anger over Jerusalem.

Besides, both Netanyahu and Trump face serious legal challenges at home: Netanyahu over corruption charges, Trump over the Russia connection. It was no accident that Trump’s Jerusalem speech was timed for eight in the evening, the prime TV news hour in Israel.

The Jerusalem declaration’s timing enables each leader to rally his base behind a largely empty distraction. Trump has a “strategy” for Jerusalem even if he doesn’t have one for North Korea. He keeps election promises that countless predecessors made then ignored. Netanyahu can take credit for U.S. recognition of Jerusalem even as he guides Israel down a slippery slope toward an ugly non-democratic one-state reality. He is already redrawing the borders of Jerusalem to keep it “Jewish” by reducing its Arab population and enlarging its Jewish municipal voter list.

Yet this is precisely where the two part company. Trump, following in Obama’s path, is broadly pulling the US out of the Middle East. Hence he can allow himself to change the Jerusalem status quo while simultaneously calling on Israelis and Palestinians to maintain it.

Netanyahu, in contrast, wants to continue, with Trump’s backing, to improve relations with the Sunni Arab states against the backdrop of the looming Iranian threat. But Palestinian violence and rejection of a peace process in reaction to Trump’s Jerusalem move jeopardizes the Israel-Sunni Arab rapprochement. A White House declaration generated more by the president’s ego than by constructive strategic thinking is likely to ignite violent Palestinian protest on the one hand and to inspire Israeli’s ruling ultra-nationalists to gobble up additional West Bank territory on the other.

The Saudis won’t like either development. If I were in Netanyahu’s shoes I would be particularly worried about the reaction in neighbouring Jordan with its large ethnic Palestinian population and flourishing Islamic movement. Still, as Netanyahu well knows, the Arab Middle East — Palestinians included — has become hopelessly dysfunctional in recent years. Neither Netanyahu nor Trump can change that.

Trump doesn’t live in Jerusalem or the Middle East. Israelis do. In the best case scenario, Trump’s gesture will have little or no effect in Israel beyond empty gestures of recognition of Jerusalem by ultra-nationalist leaders in the Philippines and Czech Republic. They are sucking up to Trump, not Bibi.

Yossi Alpher is former director of Tel Aviv University’s Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies. His most recent book is No End of Conflict: Rethinking Israel-Palestine.

Then US ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, seen at a farewell session in the Knesset, on January 17, 2017. Photo by Miriam Alster/Flash90

Announcement A Missed Opportunity

Steven Davidson, Forward
December 07, 2017

In a conference call hosted by the Israel Policy Forum, Former US Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro expressed uncertainty over what President Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem means.

“I will not sign up to the idea this is an unmitigated disaster, but it all depends on the follow up,” said Shapiro.

Shapiro, who served as President Obama’s US Ambassador to Israel from 2011 until January of this year, went on to call Trump’s decision a “missed opportunity.”

“It’s a policy change, a rhetorical change,” said Shapiro, but it missed the opportunity for “a substantive change,” namely, actually moving the embassy to Jerusalem immediately.

Shapiro did not think the decision itself was a mistake, but that the rollout seemed to be lacking in a strategic sense. “It’s absolutely correct for the United States to recognize Jerusalem as its capital,” said Shapiro, but Trump “did not frame the announcement in the context of a broader, strategic goal of ending the conflict and bringing about a two-state solution. By not nesting this announcement in that goal, either by timing it to coincide with a peace plan and by not demonstrating some understanding of what Palestinians’ needs are,” Trump is allowing for those on both sides who oppose a two-state solution a greater standing in their position.

Shapiro saw this announcement as a political move that strategically failed in diplomatic terms. “There wasn’t really sufficient time to do the preparatory consultations,” he said, which would have helped Arab leaders absorb the decision. But the president made the promise to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital during the campaign, said Shapiro. President Trump “felt it would be well-received, and likes to be the president that will do things which others will not.”

Shapiro’s primary concern now is what the Trump Administration will do next. Will there be a concerted effort to frame this in the context of reaching a two-state solution? Or will it stand alone and risk unintended consequences?

Shapiro said that because a negotiated settlement between the current Israeli and Palestinian leadership is simply “not viable,” Trump should not aim for negotiations of a two-state solution at this time, “but rather demonstrate that the two-state solution is still alive and still has viability.”

Keeping the prospect of two state negotiations alive will prove expedient down the road after future changes in political leadership in Israel and among the Palestinians can make a settlement possible. “If that’s not the approach the administration takes, then I think we are running a very different risk,” said Shapiro. “It’s a different disaster, but a slow-moving disaster.”

Shapiro believes Trump’s announcement will elicit varying reactions from American Jews. “Some will feel satisfaction,” he said, especially given that the announcement “bust[s] the myth that there are no historic Jewish ties to Jerusalem.” But on the other hand, many American Jews are extremely concerned about the stalemate in reaching a two-state solution, which this threatens to deepen, said Shapiro.

Will it be the final “nail in the coffin” to a two state solution? Said Shapiro, “It very much depends on what follows — whether this is seen as step towards a policy that clearly creates two states, or if it stands on its own.”

Steven Davison is an editorial fellow at the Forward.

Jerusalem, Partition, Justice and Peace
By Oren Ben-Dor, CounterPunch
December 08, 2017

Donald Trump has made his outrageous statement that the US views Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish State of Israel. As a further recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over the whole city he has, for the first time, not renewed the waiver concerning the removal of the US embassy to Jerusalem.

Sweeping, overwhelming and nearly unanimous worldly condemnations of Trump’s potential moves have been quick: Mahmud Abbas warns of the catastrophic consequences to the precarious stability in the region as well as to the so-called ‘peace process’.

Nearly all nations in the world voiced their outrage, with Turkey even threatening to sever diplomatic connections with Israel if these moves were implemented. There is worldwide solidarity against the US position and on a simple reading, this could be seen as a welcome sign of growing world affiliation with the Palestinian cause of national ‘self’ determination.

But is this the case? Are we not in fact witnessing a nearly unanimous and mature symptomatic concealment of the real core of the outrageousness of the proposed American move?

The question of Jerusalem is a serious and thorny one for justice and peace in Palestine. We might stand back at this point, though, and ask what is that which makes the issue of Jerusalem – a city so sacred to so many people in a way that infinitely challenges any partition – such a serious one politically?

What exactly is the ethical and political challenge posed, indeed embodied by, Jerusalem? Do the overwhelming objections to Trump’s move that we are witnessing actually respond to this challenge? Are not the objections reproducing a deep-seated denial that surrounds what is truly thought-provoking in Jerusalem? Are not these objections a symptom of a highly depoliticised form of carefully managed resistance – a self-concealing gate-keeper of how Jerusalem could, and should, be thought about in relation to the whole of historic Palestine (The area west to Jordan River that includes both what is now the State of Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip)?

Would any of those who are objecting to Trump now and who claim to care for Palestinians object also for Jerusalem to be partitioned, with East Jerusalem the capital of a Palestinian state and the West part the capital of Israel? Further, would they object to a unique international status for a unified Jerusalem seeing it as a bi-national capital of both states?

Probably they would not object as these kinds of visions would accord with the spirit of partition – the hegemonic thinking that has applied to Palestine since the First World War through the 100 years old Balfour Declaration and the various partition plans, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the Oslo agreement which defers talks about the final status of Jerusalem.

The question of Jerusalem, much like the question of Palestine, indeed like the question of the Apartheid Wall (who would object to the wall had it been erected on the 1967 borders?) has always been conceived simply as a question of ‘proper partition’ and proper borders.

Never has it been considered a question of the ‘wall within’ the hearts and minds of Israelis, a wall that does not permit any equal sharing of the land, a mental wall that Palestinians arguably sense in their encounter with Israeli Jews and which makes them highly suspicious and reticent. The objections to Trump we are witnessing, then, reproduce such an internal fetter by only relating the issue to the derivative matter of how much of Jerusalem belongs to Palestinians and Israelis.

Women in Gaza join the protest, 6 December 2017, against Trump’s decision to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. One spokesman described it as the ‘American occupation’ of Jerusalem, the city which all Palestinians says must be their capital too. Photo by Mohammed Asad/Middle East Monitor

That this city would be regarded as a capital of Israel surely is a problem. But regarding the whole or part of the city as a capital of a Palestinian state alongside Israel does not make it less of a problem. The reason for this is that the question of Jerusalem must be linked to the question of what kind of state Israel is as well to the question of how a Palestinian state could address the injustices afflicting all Palestinians.

In other words, the question of Jerusalem derives from the question of the nature of the Israeli state – a state that is premised on differential citizenship – and the effect of this nature on injustices to, and suffering of, all Palestinians, both past and future. Only a reflection of this kind can own the responsibility for the violence in such a way that would claim to represent all Israelis and Palestinians as the people who live there and who will have to share the land.

In reflecting, we have to ask who the Palestinians are.

This question is a deep question of identity and autochthony (connectedness to the earth, to the land) but more immediately, the Palestinians consists of three main groups.

First, those were ethnically cleansed from all over historic Palestine in 1947-9 and their descendants in order to create a state with a European Jewish majority and character;

second, those who have been occupied in 1967 in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem many of whom are continuously being displaced and are subjected to legal dualism of occupation;

third and finally, those who continued to live as second class citizens, often internally displaced, in the Israeli state, a state where passing the test of Jewishness immediately grants systematic differential and preferential citizenship both to those Jews who live in Palestine and all over the world in perpetuity.

Jerusalem, then, challenges us to grasp that injustice in the whole of historic Palestine that has been afflicting all Palestinians could not be territorially partitioned and that, therefore, no partition of historic Palestine could bring justice and enduring peace to all the people who live and will live there. Therefore, the objection to Trump’s move ought to mean that there could be no capital city that would symbolise and entrench partition. But that is precisely what those who object to Trump silence, thus becoming gate-keepers by attempting to preserve a sham ‘peace process’ while evading the due of justice.

What these objectors tacitly rationalise is a divided Jerusalem – a capital of two states, a vision that would entrench the injustice to two groups of Palestinians (the refugees and the Palestinian citizens of Israel), the injustice to whom is irreducibly linked to both the establishment and nature of the Jewish state.

Jerusalem should not be the capital of Israel because a capital should not symbolise silenced injustice. Rather, the whole of Jerusalem should be a capital of a single egalitarian state over the whole of historic Palestine, whose ethos of equal citizenship replaces both ‘Israel’ and ‘Palestine’. Only then would Jerusalem become symbol of justice, a capital of a state where the Palestinian right of return has been realised; where equality of citizenship is the supreme constitutional principle and, most importantly, where genuine sense of sharing the land as equals opens the horizons for new generations.

The Palestinian so called ‘Authority’ does not represent Palestinians and is becoming complicit in entrenching the legitimacy of an inbuilt Apartheid regime of the Israeli state and the worldly structures of power that guard this regime.

The outrage that the Palestinian Authority and most of the world exhibit in response to Trump pulls the wool over the deeper reason of why Jerusalem should not be the capital of Israel – the reason for which the state of Israel should be replaced. The realist politics of rationalising the Apartheid state of Israel as reasonable is hidden behind a smoke screen that is hyper-ventilated by their disingenuous objections to Trump.

Jerusalem is not the political playing field of the Palestinian Authority and those on the Zionist spectrum who call themselves moderate, despite their silencing becoming the most devious and extreme in its concealedness as guardianship of the ‘peace process’. And the powers that condition this kind of silencing are great: indeed, Donald is trumped too by the Israeli Lobby.

Jerusalem calls for thinking about the deepest existential stakes and fetters that belong to the West and in turn, to some unconscious hindrances to solidarity amongst Palestinians and between Palestinians and Israeli-born. Jerusalem points both at the origin of that which conditions, indeed demands, managed resistance that legitimises Israel.

But it is this very origin that demands philosophical explorations of, as well as acting about in genuine solidarity about, those unconscious fears of one egalitarian state in all of historic Palestine. The outrageousness of seeing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, so tellingly caricaturised by current objections, ought to cause us to meditate about what kind of place Palestine is and what could bring genuine and enduring peace there, towards better understanding of the violent history of humanity in general and Europe in particular.

Oren Ben-Dor is a former professor of Law and Philosophy at the School of Law, Southampton University, UK. His publications include Constitutional Limits and the Public Sphere (Hart Publishing, Oxford, 2000); Thinking about Law: In Silence with Heidegger(Hart Publishing, 2007) and (ed.), Law and Art: Justice, Ethics, Aesthetics (Routledge, 2011). He has published widely on the question of Historic Palestine. His latest pieces are ‘The One State Solution as a Demand of International Law: jus cogens, Challenging Apartheid and the Legal Validity of Israel’ in O. Ben-Dor and Nur Masalha (ed.), special issue Holy Land Studies, 12(2)(2013), pp. 181-205 and ‘Apartheid and the Question of Origin’ in Ilan Pappe (ed.), Israel and South Africa: The Many Faces of Apartheid, Zed Books, 2015. oymbendor@gmail.com

‘Proclamation’ worries and baffles most Jews