U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House Counsel Ivanka Trump at the inauguration of the new U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, May 14, 2018. RONEN ZVULUN/ Portal
On December 6, 2017, Donald Trump delivered his first blow to the implementation of international law in the Middle East. He recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, a decision all his predecessors had rejected because of the controversial nature of the Holy City, of which only the western part of Israel had been incorporated since 1949 and the eastern part unoccupied as recently as 1967.
Until then, in concert with other UN members, the United States had maintained its embassy in Israel in Tel Aviv while awaiting a final resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Bill Clinton had even proposed in 2000, as part of the “two-state solution,” that Jerusalem should be a joint capital between Israel and the future Palestinian state, with Israeli sovereignty over the Jewish quarters and Palestinian sovereignty over the Arab quarters (the 300,000 Palestinians remain a 60% majority in the Occupied Territories of East Jerusalem.
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A domestic political decision
Trump brushes such considerations aside in order to cling to the one and only religious freedom that he believes is perfectly guaranteed by Israel in Jerusalem. By denying the Palestinian people’s national ties to the Holy City, as well as the daily violence of the occupation in East Jerusalem, Trump continues his enterprise to destroy international legality by disengaging the United States from the Iranian nuclear power deal by B the recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Syrian Golan, which has been occupied since 1967. In doing so, the Republican president wants to please the evangelical right, which supports him unconditionally in the name of “Christian Zionism”.
Alongside his daughter and son-in-law, he will be represented on May 14, 2018 at the official inauguration of the new American Embassy in Jerusalem by two pastors whose anti-Semitic excesses did not disqualify him in the eyes of Benyamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister since 2009. It is because the Paradoxically, recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is far more important to the hard right “Christian Zionists” in the United States than it is to American Jews, who continue with the consistency of overwhelmingly voting democratically.
Also read Jerusalem: Why is Donald Trump’s recognition a problem?
Netanyahu’s bet on Christian fundamentalists extends well beyond the United States, with a coordination meeting between the Israeli prime minister and evangelical leaders from Latin America on the evening of May 14, 2018 in Jerusalem, where their “Zionist” messianism is supported by militant proselytism. In this regard, the White House can be pleased to see his gesture in Jerusalem, soon followed by Guatemala, Honduras and Paraguay. But the actual move of the Paraguayan embassy to Jerusalem is so closely linked to the personality of President Horacio Cartes that it only lasted a few months. The new Paraguayan leader, Mario Abdo Benitez, although a member of the same party as Cartes, decided in September 2018 to move his embassy to Tel Aviv to “contribute to a broader, just and lasting peace in the center”. East”. Netanyahu, enraged by this backlash, had to settle for the engagement, this time with effect, of Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales, who is closely associated with the evangelical right.
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