اقرأ باللغة العربية It is difficult to find the words to describe the anger that spread across the Arab and Islamic worlds in response to the US president's boorish decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. It is a decision that flies in the face of international law and the many UN resolutions that reject the unilateral Israeli annexation of Jerusalem, which is an occupied territory like the West Bank and Gaza, and that reflects a total contempt for the rights of the Palestinians who have been forcefully driven from their homes in the holy city. That vain and impetuous man has succeeded in isolating his country from the entire world through his refusal to heed his closest allies, and not just those in the Arab and Islamic worlds. Germany strenuously opposed the sudden decision, as did France, Italy, and even the UK. These and other governments understand what it means to abide by international law and conventions and they appreciate the historic dimensions and sensitivities surrounding an issue that Trump approached with an arrogance unparalleled by his predecessors. Trump is scrambling to extricate himself from his own mounting isolation in the US where he is coming under a heat more intense than that encountered by Richard Nixon at the height of the Watergate scandal in the 1970s. He fears the spectre of impeachment proceedings of the sort that compelled Nixon to resign before he was forced out of office. Trump's solution is to curry favour with that lobby that controls US policy, namely the Zionist lobby that places Israeli interests above those of the US. But his attempt to secure his own interests at home came at the expense of an international isolation his country has never before experienced, whether during its invasion of Iraq or even during its war in Vietnam. Trump announced his ill-conceived folly on the 100th anniversary of that other ill-conceived agreement that originally caused this whole bloody conflict in 1917, namely the Balfour Declaration. Indeed, Trump's decision is effectively that disastrous declaration's crowning touch. As it so happens, at the time he made his ignominious announcement, I was going through some of the correspondence between president Gamal Abdel-Nasser and US president John F Kennedy in the early 1960s. I came across a letter in which Nasser explained, in a simple and straightforward manner, the problem of the Israeli occupation that was generated by the Balfour Declaration. As we read it again today, it is as though Nasser had in mind the current US president who apparently knows nothing about the history and even less about the geography of this part of the world, the fate of which he felt free to tamper with in such a crude and insensitive manner. Nasser famously told Kennedy: “Someone without the title gave a promise to someone who was not entitled. Then the two managed by force and deception to strip the legitimate holder of the title of the rights to what he owned and to which he was entitled.” Nasser continued: “This is the actual nature of the Balfour Declaration to which Britain committed itself and in accordance with which it gave a pledge concerning a land that belongs not to it but to the Palestinian Arab people for the purpose of creating a Jewish homeland in Palestine. At the level of the individual as well as at the international level, Mr President, such a situation constitutes a case of flagrant fraud that would lead to a conviction in any ordinary court.” He added: “Unfortunately, the US had placed its entire weight on the side opposed to justice and the law in this case, in defiance of all American principles of freedom and democracy. It is saddening that this was motivated by domestic policy considerations that have no bearing on American principles or American interests abroad. That domestic motive was the attempt to win Jewish votes in the presidential elections. We have read an article in which a previous US ambassador to this region relates that when your predecessor, president Harry Truman, threw all his weight, which emanated from his powerful position in the highest office in the US, against what is clearly right as concerns the future of Palestine, he had no other argument to offer to the officials who drew his attention to the dangerousness of his decision but, ‘Do the Arabs vote in US presidential elections?'” Nasser's letter to Kennedy concluded: “I assure you with all honesty, Mr President, that what governs my position and outlook on the Palestinian question is not the fact that I am a president of the United Arab Republic. Rather, the basis here is my position and outlook as an Arab patriot among millions of other Arab patriots.” Has Trump read this letter? Has anyone attempted to explain to him that the land that Britain pledged to the Jews belongs to the Palestinian people, including Jerusalem? While the UN Partition Resolution of 1947 granted a specific portion of Palestine to the Jews and another portion to the Palestinians, it did not grant Jerusalem to anyone. Rather, it called for the internationalisation of the holy city. Israel violated the very resolution that gave it legitimacy and occupied the western part of the city in 1948. It occupied the eastern part in 1967. The latter occupation is not recognised by the UN or any other country in the world. Could Trump really not be aware of any of this? Or was he just faking his ignorance when he effectively said that Israel has the right to put its capital where ever it wants, as though the whole world belonged to it? There remains the question as to what we, as Arabs, are going to do. The Turkish president was quick to exploit the situation. Donning a caliphatic turban, he proclaimed Jerusalem a “red line” and called for a meeting of all Islamic nations in Istanbul. He even had the mighty courage to threaten that he would sever relations, not with the US that issued the resolution, but with Israel. How would that change anything on the ground? As anticipated, days of rage demonstrations have erupted in Palestine and protestors have begun to be killed by the live ammunition used by Israeli occupation forces. In the face of such realities, Turkish demagoguery will accomplish nothing but its self-serving purposes. The Arabs need to take concrete action, and quickly. They should convene an urgent Arab summit in which they adopt a resolution to counter that American decision. That summit should declare Jerusalem as the capital of the Palestinian state that is recognised by all Arab states as well as by the international community and which is a member of the UN and all its subsidiary organisations. I stress Jerusalem, not just East Jerusalem. Trump's decision was not restricted to West Jerusalem. He just said “Jerusalem” without distinguishing between the portion that was occupied in 1948 and the portion that was occupied in 1967. Such an Arab resolution would put paid to the Trump decision because it would not give him the final say and it would reaffirm that the question of sovereignty over Jerusalem is still under dispute. An Arab resolution that makes it clear that Trump did not succeed in settling the dispute in favour of Israel may inspire other countries that have expressed their opposition to his decision to come out in favour of the right of the people of the occupied territories to establish their capital in the territory that belongs to them, not to the occupiers.
