The Jerusalem decision - a dangerous violation of international law

The decision of President Donald Trump to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and shift the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem - the "Jerusalem decision" as it now is called - has rocked world politics and has led to widespread condemnation of the United States. It threatens peace in the ME and there are forebodings of violence very clearly in its wake.

President Trump's Jerusalem decision is nevertheless not a new decision. In 1995, the US Congress had taken the decision to shift the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem while President Clinton was in office. He and his successors, Presidents GW Bush and Barack Obama had sought waivers from Congress and were granted not to shift the Embassy because of ominous consequences in such a move.

Presidents Bill Clinton, George Bush and Barack Obama had steered clear from building a permanent chancery or moving to a temporary chancery in Jerusalem because of the dire implications embedded in Israel's decision to declare in July 1980 that united Jerusalem would be the capital of Israel. They were well aware that moving US Embassy to Jerusalem would legitimise Israel's claim over entire Jerusalem that is a disputed city and at the heart of the Israel-Palestine problem. In fact, countries that had embassies in Jerusalem before the illegal Israeli decision shifted theirs to Tel Aviv after the Israeli decision to name Jerusalem as its capital. Costa Rica and the Netherlands were among those countries.

At the time of President Trump's Jerusalem decision, not one of the 86 countries that have resident embassies in Israel had an Embassy in Jerusalem. The US President has given the State Department six months to locate the Embassy in Jerusalem and when that happens, it would be the only country to have a resident mission there. It would also mean something far more significant and sinister in the context of the Israel-Palestine conflict - the mother of all conflict in recent times, a conflict out of which the so-called Islamic terrorism has emerged to a large extent. It would mean that the United States has submitted itself to the illegal and illegitimate sovereignty of Israel over Jerusalem and has supported it wholeheartedly before the world.

Jerusalem was designated as an "international city" under the UN partition plan in 1947. Nevertheless, within a year of its independence in 1948, it violated the UN plan and grabbed the western part of Jerusalem for itself leaving the eastern part to the Palestinians under the control of Jordan. In the 1967 Israel-Egypt War, Israel grabbed the whole of the "international city" leaving the UN watching like an orphan because the US and the western powers at the UN were not willing to hold Israel responsible for its blatantly illegal act of grabbing the "international city" that has been under its control since. In fact, it was the denial of the western powers over its grabbing of the whole of Jerusalem that had emboldened Israel to declare the "international city" as its capital in July 1980.

Jerusalem has a population of 8,50,000 of which 61 per cent are Jews and 37 per cent Arabs. Of the Arabs/Palestinians, 96 per cent are Muslims and 4.0  per cent Christians. The Jews occupy western Jerusalem while the vast majority of the Palestinians live in East Jerusalem. In fact, the Palestinians demand and very legitimately so, that the eastern part of Jerusalem should be the capital of the future state of Palestine to which all parties were committed, including the Prime Minister of Israel and the extremists in Israel. President Trump's predecessors, presidents Bill Clinton, GW Bush and Barack Obama were also committed to the two-state solution with East Jerusalem as the capital of the independent state of Palestine.

It is this two-state formula, the only realistic one to end the seven-decade-long Israel-Palestine conflict,  that President Trump has put into utter jeopardy with his decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and as a follow-up, to shift the US Embassy to Jerusalem. He has signed a six months' waiver for shifting the embassy but has at the same time instructed the State Department to start hiring architects and builders to build an embassy that would be "a magnificent tribute to peace."

President Trump must have forgotten that the Palestinians are one half of the peace process with Israel as the other half. He must have further forgotten that there cannot be any mention of peace let alone any so-called "magnificent tribute to peace" by his Jerusalem decision because with it he has taken his country over the proverbial red line as the mediator in the Israel-Palestine conflict to the side of the Israelis. In fact, by this decision, the United States has forfeited the role that it had played in the ME peace process. There was always a doubt that the United States had favoured the Israelis while brokering the peace process; President Trump has now proven that the United States is on Israel's team in that process that now has been dealt a major blow.

Hanan Ashrawi has said on behalf of Palestine that the Jerusalem decision meant "the death knell of any peace process." Other Palestinian leaders have said it is a "violation of international law and a huge setback to the peace process." It has been widely condemned and criticised in the western nations. The Muslim world has been unified by this decision in rejection. The Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) has held an extraordinary summit over the Jerusalem decision where Palestine's President Mahmoud Abbas announced that his country would no longer accept the United States as an arbiter in the middle-east peace process or the Palestine-Israel conflict. The OIC Summit called the Jerusalem decision as dangerous and a violation of international law.

The Jerusalem decision ironically is going to do little for Israel except underline for whatever it is worth that a US President, who has lost credibility as a rational political leader both at home and internationally, has taken a decision that has united the rest of the world against its illegality as a nation a little more.

The Jerusalem decision has taken the United States a step away from losing its leadership of the world.

The writer is a former Ambassador.

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