International opposition to the move has grown increasingly strident.
Israel braced for violence as President Trump was due to announce Wednesday a controversial decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move the U. S. Embassy there. The expected declaration has fueled international anger and concern.
Trump will address the issue, a campaign promise, from the White House later.
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas warned that changing the status of Jerusalem would mark the end of years of peace efforts and have “dangerous consequences” for the “security and stability of the region and of the world.”
Palestinians also have warned of mass street protests over a decision that would upend decades of U. S. foreign policy toward one the world’s most contested cities.
On Tuesday, Abbas’ ruling Fatah Party tweeted images of demonstrators burning photographs of Trump in Bethlehem’s Manger Square. And Ismail Haniya, the head of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, said that Washington’s expected decision would be a “dangerous escalation” that crosses “every red line.”
West Jerusalem is where Israel’s government is based, but Palestinians view East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state. For that reason, every U. S. president since Israel’s founding in 1948 has located the U. S. Embassy in Tel Aviv.
International opposition to the move has grown increasingly strident.
The 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation said that changing Jerusalem’s status would amount to “naked aggression” against the Arab and Muslim world, and the head of the Arab League, said it would be a “dangerous measure that would have repercussion” across the entire Middle East.
Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud told Trump in a phone call that recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital or relocating the U. S. Embassy there from Tel Aviv “would constitute a flagrant provocation of Muslims, all over the world.”
There were also warnings from Jordan’s King Abdullah, Egypt’s President Abdul Fattah Al Sisi and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In recent days, the European Union, Germany and France have all implored Trump not to take action on Jerusalem.
The U. S. Consulate in Jerusalem has restricted government employees and their families from personal travel to Jerusalem’s Old City and the West Bank.
Still, while Palestinians may hold demonstrations against the decision, and Arab leaders may condemn it, violent Islamist extremist groups generally have not rallied to the Palestinian cause, said Aaron David Miller, a Middle East analyst and vice president at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington.
Miller, a former U. S. peace negotiator, said groups like the Islamic State and al-Qaeda are more concerned with confronting regional Arab governments, with killing Christians and Shiite Muslims in Iraq, and fighting to preserve their territories.
“Al-Qaeda has left the Israelis alone through three Gaza wars,” he said.
