RAMALLAH: The Palestinian president’s office warned on Friday of the potential destructive effects of any move denying their claim to Arab East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.
“The American recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel destroys the peace process,” President Mahmoud Abbas’s spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina said in a statement to AFP.
“The American recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moving the American embassy to Jerusalem involves the same level of danger to the future of the peace process and pushes the region into instability,” he said.
The warning comes as US President Donald Trump is due to decide by Monday on whether to move his country’s embassy from Tel Aviv to the disputed holy city.
Reports emerged on Friday that Trump could again delay moving the embassy but recognise occupied Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state.
The Palestinians see Arab Est Jerusalem as the capital of their future state and fiercely oppose any changes that could be regarded as legitimising Israel’s occupation and annexation of its eastern sector. Without referring to Trump or the US by name, Abu Rudeina said any just solution in the Middle East required recognition of Arab East Jerusalem as the capital of an independent Palestinian state.
“East Jerusalem, with its holy places, is the beginning and the end of any solution and any project that saves the region from destruction,” he said in an earlier statement on the official Wafa news agency.
Israel occupied Arab East Jerusalem in the Six-Day War of 1967 and later annexed it in a move never recognised by the international community.
No countries currently have their embassies in occupied Jerusalem, instead keeping them in the Israeli commercial capital Tel Aviv.
Trump is due to decide by Monday on whether to renew a six-month waiver on moving the embassy. He pledged during his campaign to move the embassy to occupied Jerusalem but renewed the waiver in May.
The US leader has said he wants to relaunch frozen peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians in search of the “ultimate deal.”
Any major shift in US policy would make that goal more difficult to achieve, Middle East analysts say.
The US State Department said last Friday, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) office in Washington can remain open to discuss peace with Israel and may be able to resume full operations soon. The comment came one week after US officials said the diplomatic mission would have to close because of a law stipulating that Palestinian leaders must not call for Israelis to face international prosecution.
The order provoked outrage among the Palestinian leadership, who threatened to cut all ties to President Donald Trump’s administration if the ban went ahead, a move that would doom his hopes to revive the peace process.
But on Friday a senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Palestinians had been advised to limit their activity at the office to the peace process until a waiver to the law is renewed.
“Given the lapse last week of a waiver of statutory restrictions on PLO activity in the United States, we have advised the PLO Office to limit its activities to those related to achieving a lasting, comprehensive peace between the Israelis and Palestinians,” the official said.
If after 90 days the president determines that the Palestinians are engaged in “direct and meaningful negotiations with Israel,” restrictions on the PLO and its Washington office may be lifted, the official added.
Agencies
|