Israel Simply Has no Right to Exist in Occupied City

jerusalem1

Israel is the only state in the world that is not allowed to locate its capital in a national city of its choice.” It seems like an innocent enough proclamation, and even accurate pushback against global double standards, until one considers the political and legal dimensions.

The dramatic performance of U.S. President Donald Trump , in which he announced he would move the American embassy to Jerusalem, set off a wave of denunciations , warnings and threats from one end of the Middle East to the other this week.

Israel considers the Jerusalem its eternal and indivisible capital and wants all embassies based there, If that kind of self-reproach is forthcoming, Israel can expect the Palestinians to be forgiving and magnanimous in return. The alternative is perpetual war.

Palestinians want the capital of an independent Palestinian state to be in the city’s eastern sector, which Israel captured in a 1967 war and annexed in a move never recognised internationally. With the benefit of just a moment’s it’s the only state in the world whose government dares to locate its capital in a city located beyond its sovereign borders and subject to superior competing claims.” Granted, Israel has declined to date to define its borders for purposes of international law, presumably to leave room for its own further territorial expansion .

But the Arab and Muslim response stems from the spirit of the statement and the very recognition of Jerusalem, which runs counter to the international convention of the past 70 years. So the next arena could move to the UN General Assembly and Security Council.

At stake, in particular the West Bank, which is known within Israel by its biblical names , signifying Israel’s outlier belief that the ethnic and religious heritage of the Jewish people takes precedence over modern international law.

It is helpful to go back at least 70 years to the controversial UN partition proposals , Israel over the years has often congratulated itself on its acceptance it’s contrasts with the rejection , I know it’s a hugely unfashionable thing to say and one which, given the current parlous state of the controversial process, some will also find irresponsible. But it’s a fact that I have always considered central to any genuine peace formula.

Sometimes it seems Israeli- Palestinian conflict will remain a subject for dinner party talks and go on feeding the usual narratives.

As everyone in the world knows well, that Palestinians suffered massive dispossession and expulsion in the conflict torn zone .

That’s not to say there wasn’t violence: Four Palestinian protesters were killed in clashes with Israeli security forces, and hundreds were wounded. On Sunday afternoon, a lone Palestinian attacker stabbed an Israeli security guard. But the incidents remained isolated and so far haven’t sparked wider protests, but still Israel ever refused to Palestinians of any right to return to their homes or place of habitation however deep and authentic their connections regardless of how persuasive their claims of Palestinian identity happen to be.

So why didn’t the regional instability materialize as predicted?

As Israel has sold the false story to other counter parts of world that the bits about Jerusalem contained in the resolution can be ignored without comment, and deserve to be long forgotten.

Trump’s announcement on Jerusalem, Elgindy says, “was a huge set back” for Palestinian leadership.

The symbolic and religious significance of Jerusalem to the three monotheistic religions provided a parallel strong rationale anything, further vindicated with the passage of time.

The Palestinians’ chief representative to Britain, Manuel Hassassian, blasted Mr Trump ahead of the decision to move the US embassy.

He told the BBC “If he says what he is intending to say about Jerusalem being the capital of Israel, it means a kiss of death to the two state solution.

Trump’s recognition that even the Palestinians and the So-Called other Arab countries have silently replaced the ” internationalization” of Jerusalem with the ‘two state solution’ , the U.S policy has been to leave the status of Jerusalem to be decided by the two sides as part of a final peace agreement , as the Trump’s move immediately attracted international condemnation, with critics saying it would bring more conflict to the region. As expected, there have been protests by Palestinians since the move and Middle Eastern leaders have demanded that Trump rescind the recognition.

Even small crisis over Jerusalem’s status and that of the holy sites in its ancient Old City have sparked deadly bloodshed in the past and Israel ever acted unilaterally and unlawfully against unified opposition within the UN, in defiance of world public opinion .

Most countries consider East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed after capturing it in a 1967 war, to be occupied territory and say the status of the city should be decided at future Israeli-Palestinian talks. Israel says that all of Jerusalem is its capital, while Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a future independent state.

According to international humanitarian law, an Occupying Power should take no steps, other than those justified by imperative security considerations, to diminish the rights and prospects of a civilian population living under occupation.

For an controversial man ( Donald J Trump) to depart from this international consensus is not only striking heavy blows against the U.S. role as intermediary in any future peace process .

Does any state have the right to establish its capital in a city that is ‘occupied’ rather than under the exclusive sovereign authority of the territorial government?The United States and Israel have created the global discourse on this issue, setting stringent parameters that grow increasingly narrow regarding the content and direction of this debate. Anything discussed outside the set parameters has, until recently, widely been viewed as unrealistic, unproductive and even subversive.

Mir Suhail is a Srinagar based freelance journalist . He tweets as @MirSuhail1 and can be reached at [email protected].

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