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Jerusalem will remain Arab

Dec 06,2017 - Last updated at Dec 06,2017

The announcement on Tuesday by US President Donald Trump that he intends to move his country’s embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem runs contrary to international legitimacy resolutions, and is a show of support for an occupying power.

By taking this decision, Trump is breaking with decades-old policy by former US administrations that the status of the occupied city should be determined in peace talks by the concerned parties.

Trump is going against such established policy, to the fact that his country should support peace talks and should side by the forces of moderation in the Arab region. 

Jordan has been at the forefront of countries trying to advise the US administration against taking this decision and has been exerting all possible efforts to build a unified Arab and Islamic stance to preserve the status of the city, holy to Muslims, Christians and Jews.

The US president has shown total disregard of the value of the city not only to Arabs and Muslims around the world, but also to the Palestinians who were hoping to have the US honour its status as an honest broker of the Mideast peace talks and work towards establishing through negotiations a Palestinian state on Palestinian national soil, with East Jerusalem — the part that was occupied by Israel in the 1967 war — as its capital.

Jordan, which along with the Arab and Muslim worlds, supports such stance, also plays a pivotal role in the occupied city as the custodian of Muslim and Christian holy sites. This Jordanian position was safeguarded in the 1994 Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty signed in Wadi Araba in southern Jordan in the presence of US president Bill Clinton.

The current administration is ignoring US history as a peace broker, as a supporter of forces of moderation and to the position of its friends and allies in the region at these critical times.

It is also ignoring the fact that injustice and the lack of progress in peace talks have been used as rallying points by extremist forces trying to put the blame on pro-peace Arab countries for their inability to regain the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people.

 

Despite the US decision, the whole world realises that Palestine belongs to the Palestinian people who will eventually regain their legitimate rights, and despite the continued Israeli occupation since 1967, Jerusalem will remain an Arab and Palestinian city that enjoys a special status to the followers of the three monotheistic religions.

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