I’m a little surprised this isn’t already on the front page or in community diaries. We all know Trump needs a distraction from the Mueller investigation badly. It seems like the Minority Leader in the Senate is helping him get that by advising on a very volatile and dangerous policy for the Middle East that is illegal under international law and will stoke terrorism and tensions to a very high degree. From the Hill article:
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer advised President Trump to declare Jerusalem as the "undivided" capital of Israel ahead of Trump's expected announcement on the matter this week, the New York Democrat told The Weekly Standard on Tuesday... and criticized Trump over his "indecisiveness" on the issue.
"President Trump's recent comments suggest his indecisiveness on the embassy's relocation," Schumer told the news agency. "As someone who strongly believes that Jerusalem is the undivided capital of Israel, I am calling for the US Embassy in Israel to be relocated to Jerusalem."
This is a very bad move and may end up creating the kind of tension and violent events that Trump will need to distract the country from his crimes in office and during the campaign.
Regardless of whether Sen. Schumer believes in this policy, it endangers us all that that he would use the Trump administration, given all the weaknesses, instability and disorganization at the State Department and in the White House in general, to achieve his goal. This is reckless.
Prof. Juan Cole explains why this is a very bad policy in this article: “Another way Trump will get us Killed: to move US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem” Some quick points from the article:
— In international law, Israel does not have a right to all of Jerusalem.
— Occupying powers are not allowed to annex occupied territory, by the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions.
— Jerusalem is extremely important and holy (just after Mecca and Medina) to the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims.
One of the three major motivations for Usama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda to attack the United States in 2001 was the Israeli occupation of the Muslim parts of Jerusalem.
The national security elites in Washington and Tel Aviv have dealt with Muslim anger over the impoverishment of the Palestinians and the Israeli threat to the Muslim holy places of Jerusalem by covering up these actions, denying them, obfuscating them, and then crushing any Muslims who dare complain about them.
They call this counter-terrorism policy. And they’ve made it work for them in grabbing power, both in the world and at home, where they argue to us that the terrorism that they are helping provoke means we have to give up the Bill of Rights.
— Juan Cole, Dec. 6th 2017
If you’re calling Sen. Schumer’s office about anything else — the tax plan, medicare, etc. please consider including this issue as well. Whether you agree with him or not, the Trump administration is too unstable to use as a vehicle for such an dangerous and aggressive policy.
The Guardian weighs in:
The Palestinian envoy to the UK, Manuel Hassassian, told the BBC: “If [Trump] 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.
“He is declaring war in the Middle East, he is declaring war against 1.5 billion Muslims (and) hundreds of millions of Christians that are not going to accept the holy shrines to be totally under the hegemony of Israel.”