We have covered the escalating threats from leaders of and functionaries in the Palestinian Authority that there will be violence if the Donald Trump fulfills his promise to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Israel’s capital, Jerusalem.
This is a two-faced move, Palestinian leadership’s two-faced Jerusalem Embassy game:
We reported the other day on the escalating campaign by Palestinian leaders threatening and predicting violence if the U.S. moves our embassy to Jerusalem, Palestinian leadership: There will be violence if U.S. moves Embassy to Jerusalem.While Hamas is behind some of the incitement, an important feature of incitement regarding the Embassy is manufactured by the Palestinian Authority, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, through Mosques run by Imams loyal to the PA. Leaders, such as Mahmoud Abbas, then use the violence they are instigating behind-the-scenes to warn that an Embassy move might inspire violence.
While the U.S. Embassy has a great beachfront location, it’s not in Israel’s capital.
The latest is that Fatah is promising to “open gates of hell” if the Embassy is moved, as The Times of Israel reports:
The spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party on Saturday warned that if the Trump administration moves the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, it will “open the gates of hell.”Fatah spokesman Osama Qawasmeh said Donald Trump’s campaign promise, if implemented, would negate chances for peace and stability in the region, and “the Palestinian people won’t allow that happen,” according to Israel Radio. To move the embassy, he said, would be to “open the gates of hell in the region and in the whole world.”
Abbas himself, opening a Palestinian Embassy at The Vatican, repeated his warnings:
Any attempts at legitimising the illegal Israeli annexation of the city will destroy the prospects of any political process, bury the hopes for a two-state solution, and fuel extremism in our region, as well as worldwide,” Abbas said.”In this moment, we extend our hand to President-elect Trump for his cooperation to make peace based on international law,” he added.
All the threats are having an impact on the French and Europeans, as WaPo reports Mideast conference has an urgent message for Trump:
In a diplomatic gambit that at times sounded as though the clock was about to run out, envoys from some 70 countries Sunday called on Israel and the Palestinians to recommit to the goal of two states for two peoples, before the possibility slips away.But there was someone else they hoped to persuade, too: President-elect Donald Trump.France’s foreign minister kicked off the conference Sunday by warning that moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem would have “extremely serious consequences” for the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.Characterizing it as a provocation, JeanMarc Ayrault said he doubted that Trump would in the end actually fulfill his pledge to relocate the embassy in a city that Israelis have named as their capital and that Palestinians desire a part of to become the capital of a future Palestinian state.“When you are president of the United States . . . you can’t have such an entrenched, unilateral position,” he told France 3 television. “You have to seek to contribute to creating the conditions for peace.”
Elder of Ziyon makes a good point about what the Palestinians are doing — they are treating the Embassy move the way Islamists treat the publication of Mohammed cartoons. Do it, and you die, What does the Jerusalem embassy have in common with Mohammed cartoons?:
It is Mohammed cartoons all over again.There is no legal reason why the US should not move the embassy. The only reason against it is because of fear that Arabs will go crazy and start killing people.And this fear means that Muslims have veto power over literally anything they don’t like worldwide.There doesn’t have to be any logic – the entire underpinning of this blackmail is that Arabs and Muslims are irrational and illogical.The Mohammed cartoons were the same way. No one will print cartoons of Mohammed because Muslims might freak out and kill people….There is a third parallel: In neither case would anyone actually get hurt if it wasn’t for the same people “warning” the West of a “spontaneous outbreak of violence” being the ones who incite the violence to being with.
Capitulation encourages more threats of violence, and actual violence, as a Palestinian policy tool. Calling their bluff could be a major move towards peace, as it will remove threats as a negotiating position.
Will Trump capitulate?
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