By GulfNews
Jerusalem will always remain an Arab city and moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to the occupied Holy City will not change the reality on the ground.
One of US President Donald Trump’s most contentious foreign policy projects, the inauguration of a US embassy in occupied Jerusalem, will be carried out today (Monday, May 14) with peace in the Middle East proving more elusive than ever.
Palestinians see the move as an in-your-face affirmation of pro-Israel bias by the US and a fatal blow to the dream of statehood.
A US delegation led by deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan, and includes Trump’s daughter and son-in-law, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, will attend the ceremony.
The US-Israeli festivities opening the compound today precede memorial events observed by the Palestinians to mark the Nakba, or the catastrophe of their displacement at Israel’s creation in 1948.
By moving the embassy, Trump has upended six decades of conventional thinking and diplomatic protocols, Palestinian officials say.
“This is the most flagrant and hostile act by the United States against the Palestinians since the beginning of the [Israeli] occupation,” Yasser Abd Rabbo, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation Executive Committee and former minister of information, told Gulf News.
The US move angered much of the world, and Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas responded by breaking off all contact with Washington. “It ended the role of the United States as an honest broker,” Nabil Shaath, a senior adviser to Abbas and former chief negotiator with Israel, said last week.
Such paralysis and loss of hope have been major drivers of Palestinian unrest. Underscoring the conflict’s volatility, thousands of Gaza residents plan to march today towards Israel’s border and possibly breach it in an attempt to break a decade-old blockade of their territory. Gaza health authorities were preparing for mass casualties.
