US still blocks in support of Israel over Jerusalem

Ln December 6, 2017, Donald Trump dealt his first blow to the implementation of international law in the Middle East. Recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, a decision all of his predecessors had refused to subscribe to due to the disputed nature of the Holy City, of which only the western part has been integrated into Israel since 1949, the eastern part not having been occupied only in 1967.

It was while awaiting a definitive solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that the United States, in unison with the other UN members, had until then maintained their embassy in Israel in Tel Aviv. Bill Clinton had even proposed in 2000, under the “two state solution”that Jerusalem is a shared capital between Israel and the future Palestinian state, with Israeli sovereignty over Jewish neighborhoods and Palestinian sovereignty over Arab neighborhoods (the 300,000 Palestinians remain a 60% majority in occupied East Jerusalem).

An internal political decision

Trump sets aside these considerations to stick to the only freedom of worship, according to him perfectly guaranteed by Israel in Jerusalem. Thus denying the Palestinian people’s national attachment to the Holy City, as well as the day-to-day violence of the occupation in East Jerusalem, Trump continues his feat of demolishing international law by untying the United States from the Iran nuclear deal, then recognizing the sovereignty Israeli territory in the Syrian territory of the Golan, occupied since 1967. The republican president thus intends to satisfy the evangelical right which supports him unconditionally in the name of a “Christian Zionism”.

In addition to his daughter and son-in-law, he was represented in Jerusalem on May 14, 2018, during the official inauguration of the new American embassy, ​​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 recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is paradoxically much more important for the ” Christian Zionists of the far right in the United States than for American Jews, who consistently continue to vote overwhelmingly Democratic.

Netanyahu’s bet on Christian fundamentalists goes well beyond the United States, with, on the evening of May 14, 2018 in Jerusalem, a coordination meeting between the Israeli premier and evangelical leaders of Latin America, where their messianism Zionist it is driven by militant proselytism. It is in this context that the White House can be pleased to see your gesture in Jerusalem soon followed by Guatemala, Honduras and Paraguay. But the actual transfer of the Paraguayan embassy to Jerusalem is so linked to the personality of President Horacio Cartes that it lasts only a few months. The new Paraguayan head of state, Mario Abdo Benitez, despite being a member of the same party as Cartes, decided in September 2018 to repatriate his embassy to Tel Aviv for ” contribute ” to ” a broad, just and lasting peace in the Middle East “. Netanyahu, furious at this setback, had to settle for the commitment, this time followed by effect, of the President of Guatemala, Jimmy Morales, who was closely linked to the evangelical right.

You still have 37.48% of this article to read. The following is for subscribers only.