--
--
--
--
Update: 21/12/2017
UN
General Assembly rejects Trump's Jerusalem move
A
resounding majority of United Nations member states has defied unprecedented
threats by the US to declare President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem
as Israel's capital "null and void".
The
non-binding resolution was approved at a UN General Assembly emergency meeting
on Thursday 21/Dec/2017- with 128 votes
in favour and nine(9) against, while 35 countries abstained.
--
UN
votes resoundingly to reject Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as capital
The
United Nations body’s debate and vote highlighted for a second time in a week
the international isolation of the United States over the Jerusalem issue
The
United Nations general assembly has delivered a stinging rebuke to Donald
Trump, voting by a huge majority to reject his unilateral recognition of
Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
The
vote came after a redoubling of threats by Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to
the UN, who said that Washington would remember which countries “disrespected” America by voting against it.
Despite
the warning, 128 members voted on Thursday in favour of the resolution
supporting the longstanding international consensus that the status of
Jerusalem – which is claimed as a capital by both Israel and the Palestinians –
can only be settled as an agreed final issue in a peace deal. Countries
which voted for the resolution included major recipients of US aid such as Egypt,
Afghanistan and Iraq. Here
--
Trump threatens to
cut aid to countries over UN Jerusalem vote
General assembly to vote on rejecting US
recognition of city as Israeli capital
Trump: ‘We’re not going to be taken
advantage of any longer’
Donald Trump has threatened to withhold “billions”
of dollars of US aid from countries which vote in favour of a United Nations
resolution rejecting the US president’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital
of Israel.
His comments came after the US ambassador to the
UN, Nikki Haley, wrote to about 180 of 193 member states warning that
she will be “taking names” of countries that vote for a general assembly
resolution on Thursday critical of the announcement which overturned
decades of US foreign policy.
Speaking at a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Trump
amplified Haley’s threat.
“Let them vote against us,” he said.
“We’ll save a lot. We don’t care. But
this isn’t like it used to be where they could vote against you and then you
pay them hundreds of millions of dollars,” he said. “We’re not going to be
taken advantage of any longer.”
The warning appeared aimed largely at UN members in
Africa, Asia and Latin America who are regarded as more vulnerable to US
pressure. Here
--
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu denounces United Nation as ‘house of lies’, amid last ditch efforts by US and
Israel to head off opposition
In
an indication of the scale of defeat anticipated, Israel’s prime minister,
Benjamin Netanyahu, launched a pre-emptive attack denouncing the UN as a “house
of lies” on Thursday morning.
“The state of Israel rejects this vote outright,” Netanyahu said. “Jerusalem is our capital, we will continue to build there
and additional embassies will move to Jerusalem.
“Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, whether or not the UN
recognises this. It took 70 years for the United States to formally recognise
this, and it will take years for the UN to do the same.”
The
Israeli foreign ministry had earlier described the country’s frantic diplomatic
efforts as “very vast”.
Thursday’s
emergency general assembly session is as much a vote on the US’s claim to
international leadership under Trump as on the fraught issue of Jerusalem. Here
--
Turkey
to recognise Jerusalem as capital of PALESTINE in challenge to US and Israel
TURKEY
is planning to open a Jerusalem embassy and recognise the city as Palestine’s
capital in a furious row with the US. Dec 18, 2017
--
US
will 'take names of those who vote to reject Jerusalem recognition'
Nimrata Randhawa (Nikki Haley)
Nimrata Randhawa (Nikki Haley)
The Trump administration’s heavy-handed approach to
foreign policy – often in breach of both international consensus and diplomatic
niceties – has alienated even close allies.
The 193-member UN general assembly
– which has no vetoes – will hold an emergency session on Thursday to vote on
the proposed measure that the US vetoed at the security council earlier this week.
There was fury in Washington over Monday’s vote, in
which the US was isolated in a 14-1 vote requesting Trump withdraw his recognition of
Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Here
---
update:22 Dec 2017
---
Russia's
President Vladimir Putin and Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday
said they both supported creating a Palestinian state, a day after the UN rejected the decision by Washington
to recognise
Jerusalem as Israel's capital.
In a
phonecall,
the two leaders "discussed the situation of Middle East peace talks in
the context of the resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly on the status
of Jerusalem," the Kremlin said in a statement.
They
"confirmed the mutual disposition to continue to assist in resolving the
Palestine-Israeli conflict on the basis of international norms and realisation
of the right of the Palestinian people to create an independent state... Here
---
---
Up^ Date: 24 Dec 2017
Santa
costume-clad Palestinian protesters clash with Israeli forces in Bethlehem
---
--
Quote:
“I am the Sultan Abdul Aziz Bin Abdul Rahman Al Saud al-Faisal and I
conceded and acknowledged a thousand times to Sir Percy Cox, delegate of Great
Britain, that I have no objection to giving Palestine to the poor Jews or even
to non-Jews, and I will never ever violate their [the UK] orders,”
read the note signed by King Abdul Aziz.
Roosevelt
later wrote to the Saudi king in a follow up letter.
--
Ibn
Rashid had rejected all overtures from the British Empire made to him via Ibn
Saud to be another of its puppets.8 More so, Ibn Rashid expanded his
territory north to the new mandated [Sott ed - mandate
means colony] Palestinian border as well as to the borders of Iraq
in the summer of 1920.
The British became
concerned that an alliance may be brewing between Ibn Rashid, who controlled
the northern part of the peninsula, and the Sharif who controlled the western
part.
More so, the Empire wanted the land routes between the Palestinian ports on the
Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf under the rule of a friendly party. At
the Cairo Conference, Churchill agreed with an
imperial officer, Sir Percy Cox, that "Ibn Saud should be
'given the opportunity to occupy Ha'il.'"9
By
the end of 1920, the British were showering Ibn Saud with "a monthly 'grant'
of £10,000 in gold, on top of his monthly subsidy. He also received abundant
arms supplies, totaling more than 10,000 rifles, in addition to the critical
siege and four field guns" with British-Indian instructors.10
Finally,
in September 1921,
the British unleashed Ibn Saud on Ha'il, which officially surrendered in November
1921. It was after this victory the British bestowed a new title on Ibn
Saud. He was no longer to be "Emir of Najd and Chief of its Tribes"
but "Sultan of Najd and its Dependencies".
Ha'il had dissolved into a dependency of the Empire's Sultan of Najd. Here
--
US
President Donald Trump has said it is time to
officially recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
The
decision comes seven decades after the Declaration of the establishment of the
State of Israel, that was unilaterally announced on 14
May 1948 by David Ben-Gurion. At the time, no borders were
settled for the new state. It is also for this reason that Israel's admission
to the United Nations (UN) soon became a
strategic priority. The admission to the UN, in fact, was and is the "most
secure and expeditious way" of gaining widespread or universal
recognition.
Yet, Israel's original application for admission to the UN was rejected by the UN Security Councilon December 17, 1948. The second bid for application was made on February 24, 1949. "Negotiations", assured the then Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban at the General Assembly of the UN, "would not, however, affect the juridical status of Jerusalem, to be defined by international consent".
These binding assurances - that served as the basis for Israel's admission to the UN - were made one year after the war of 1947- 48 (see Uri Avnery's "sacred mantras" on "rejectionism"): none of the historical events of the following seven decades has the legal capacity to erase them. Even more so considering that when, in 1980, Israel passed a Basic Law which declared Jerusalem "complete and united", as the "capital of Israel", the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 476affirming that "measures which have altered the geographic, demographic and historical character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem are null and void".
This decision was in line with the juridical principles affirmed 35 years earlier. In June 1945, in fact, the San Francisco Conference stipulated, in Article 80 of the UN Charter, that the organisation had the necessary power to conclude trusteeship agreements that could alter existing rights held under the pre-existing Mandate for Palestine. In the Partition Plan (Resolution 181, November 29, 1947) the UN General Assembly clarified the will to establish an international trusteeship regime in Jerusalem.
The relevance of history
Notwithstanding these considerations, juridical aspects alone can hardly explain why any unilateral step regarding Jerusalem cannot but ignite further polarisation: It is history, in fact, that shows the key reasons why Trump's unilateral decisions or attempts are ill-fated.
Despite growing absolutist claims, "Uru-Shalem" (the city "founded by Shalem", a god venerated by the Canaanites), founded by the Canaanites around 5,000 years ago, has not belonged to one single people in its entire history. This is a further reason why, in its nature, Jerusalem must be internationally, or at least bilaterally, shared.
Long before the three monotheistic religions, Al-Haram al-Sharif, the site on which Solomon's Temple stood, hosted a Canaanite place of worship. It is noteworthy that in biblical usage, Jerusalem is often mentioned as "Zion", the high ground where its original inhabitants built the present city's original fortress. "Siyon" is a term of Canaanite origin that can be translated as "hill" or "high ground".
At the beginning of the last century, almost 80 percent of the city's inhabitants lived in mixed neighbourhoods and quarters. In Yaacov Yehoshua's memoir, Yaldut be-Yerushalayim ha-yashena, the author recalled that in the city "there were joint compounds of Jews and Muslims. We were like one family [...] Our children played with their [Muslim] children in the yard, and if children from the neighbourhood hurt us the Muslim children who lived in our compound protected us. They were our allies."
All this should not suggest that inter-religious and/or confessional conflicts were historically unknown. Some clashes have been documented as early as the Middle Ages. Yet, their nature and scope are hardly comparable to more recent times. More importantly, they don't mirror the actual history of most of Jerusalem's (and the broader region's) past.
True, the "actual history" and local equilibria, particularly in late Ottoman times, were not perceived by all observers, particularly external ones, in the same way. In 1839, William T. Young, first British Vice-Consul in Jerusalem, noted, for instance, that a Jew in Jerusalem was not considered "much above a dog". Young himself, however, had to acknowledge that, in case of need, a Jew would have found shelter "sooner in a Mussulman's house than in that of a Christian".
Moreover, external observers used to provide very different, and, at times, contradictory opinions. Just a few years after Young, in 1857, British Consul to Jerusalem James Finn pointed out, for instance, that "there are few countries in the world where, in spite of appearances to the contrary, there is so much of practical religious tolerance as in Palestine".
Nowhere more than in judicial records is it possible to assess to which extent local communities perceived themselves, in Finn's times and in other periods of Ottoman history, as being constructive elements of the Ottoman milieu. American historian Amnon Cohen, who spent years studying documents stored in the archives of the Sharia (Islamic law) religious court of Ottoman Jerusalem, found 1000 Jewish cases filed from the year 1530 to 1601.
Jews preferred to use Islamic Sharia courts rather than their own, rabbinical courts: "The Sultan's Jewish subjects", noted Cohen, "had no reason to mourn their status or begrudge their conditions of life. The Jews of Ottoman Jerusalem enjoyed religious and administrative autonomy within an Islamic state, and as a constructive, dynamic element of the local economy and society they could - and actually did - contribute to its functioning".
External understandings: a pattern
Arthur Balfour, who gave his name to the 1917 Declaration, visited Palestine for the first time in his life in 1925. On that occasion, he presided over the opening of Jerusalem's Hebrew University, accompanied by Chaim Weizmann and his wife, Vera.
Despite Balfour's very limited knowledge of the local reality, his actions were based on the rock-solid conviction that the ideas that he was embracing were "rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land".
Each observer and historian can have a different opinion about these aspects and Balfour's approach. "The truth", noted Oscar Wilde, "is rarely pure and never simple". Yet, the point remains: US President Donald Trump, not dissimilarly from Arthur Balfour one century ago, is imposing a unilateral understanding of the local reality without knowing much of its complex past and present. To pay the price for this will be, once again, Israelis and Palestinians alike. Here
--
Read: HereYet, Israel's original application for admission to the UN was rejected by the UN Security Councilon December 17, 1948. The second bid for application was made on February 24, 1949. "Negotiations", assured the then Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban at the General Assembly of the UN, "would not, however, affect the juridical status of Jerusalem, to be defined by international consent".
These binding assurances - that served as the basis for Israel's admission to the UN - were made one year after the war of 1947- 48 (see Uri Avnery's "sacred mantras" on "rejectionism"): none of the historical events of the following seven decades has the legal capacity to erase them. Even more so considering that when, in 1980, Israel passed a Basic Law which declared Jerusalem "complete and united", as the "capital of Israel", the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 476affirming that "measures which have altered the geographic, demographic and historical character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem are null and void".
This decision was in line with the juridical principles affirmed 35 years earlier. In June 1945, in fact, the San Francisco Conference stipulated, in Article 80 of the UN Charter, that the organisation had the necessary power to conclude trusteeship agreements that could alter existing rights held under the pre-existing Mandate for Palestine. In the Partition Plan (Resolution 181, November 29, 1947) the UN General Assembly clarified the will to establish an international trusteeship regime in Jerusalem.
The relevance of history
Notwithstanding these considerations, juridical aspects alone can hardly explain why any unilateral step regarding Jerusalem cannot but ignite further polarisation: It is history, in fact, that shows the key reasons why Trump's unilateral decisions or attempts are ill-fated.
Despite growing absolutist claims, "Uru-Shalem" (the city "founded by Shalem", a god venerated by the Canaanites), founded by the Canaanites around 5,000 years ago, has not belonged to one single people in its entire history. This is a further reason why, in its nature, Jerusalem must be internationally, or at least bilaterally, shared.
Long before the three monotheistic religions, Al-Haram al-Sharif, the site on which Solomon's Temple stood, hosted a Canaanite place of worship. It is noteworthy that in biblical usage, Jerusalem is often mentioned as "Zion", the high ground where its original inhabitants built the present city's original fortress. "Siyon" is a term of Canaanite origin that can be translated as "hill" or "high ground".
At the beginning of the last century, almost 80 percent of the city's inhabitants lived in mixed neighbourhoods and quarters. In Yaacov Yehoshua's memoir, Yaldut be-Yerushalayim ha-yashena, the author recalled that in the city "there were joint compounds of Jews and Muslims. We were like one family [...] Our children played with their [Muslim] children in the yard, and if children from the neighbourhood hurt us the Muslim children who lived in our compound protected us. They were our allies."
All this should not suggest that inter-religious and/or confessional conflicts were historically unknown. Some clashes have been documented as early as the Middle Ages. Yet, their nature and scope are hardly comparable to more recent times. More importantly, they don't mirror the actual history of most of Jerusalem's (and the broader region's) past.
True, the "actual history" and local equilibria, particularly in late Ottoman times, were not perceived by all observers, particularly external ones, in the same way. In 1839, William T. Young, first British Vice-Consul in Jerusalem, noted, for instance, that a Jew in Jerusalem was not considered "much above a dog". Young himself, however, had to acknowledge that, in case of need, a Jew would have found shelter "sooner in a Mussulman's house than in that of a Christian".
Moreover, external observers used to provide very different, and, at times, contradictory opinions. Just a few years after Young, in 1857, British Consul to Jerusalem James Finn pointed out, for instance, that "there are few countries in the world where, in spite of appearances to the contrary, there is so much of practical religious tolerance as in Palestine".
Nowhere more than in judicial records is it possible to assess to which extent local communities perceived themselves, in Finn's times and in other periods of Ottoman history, as being constructive elements of the Ottoman milieu. American historian Amnon Cohen, who spent years studying documents stored in the archives of the Sharia (Islamic law) religious court of Ottoman Jerusalem, found 1000 Jewish cases filed from the year 1530 to 1601.
Jews preferred to use Islamic Sharia courts rather than their own, rabbinical courts: "The Sultan's Jewish subjects", noted Cohen, "had no reason to mourn their status or begrudge their conditions of life. The Jews of Ottoman Jerusalem enjoyed religious and administrative autonomy within an Islamic state, and as a constructive, dynamic element of the local economy and society they could - and actually did - contribute to its functioning".
External understandings: a pattern
Arthur Balfour, who gave his name to the 1917 Declaration, visited Palestine for the first time in his life in 1925. On that occasion, he presided over the opening of Jerusalem's Hebrew University, accompanied by Chaim Weizmann and his wife, Vera.
Despite Balfour's very limited knowledge of the local reality, his actions were based on the rock-solid conviction that the ideas that he was embracing were "rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land".
Each observer and historian can have a different opinion about these aspects and Balfour's approach. "The truth", noted Oscar Wilde, "is rarely pure and never simple". Yet, the point remains: US President Donald Trump, not dissimilarly from Arthur Balfour one century ago, is imposing a unilateral understanding of the local reality without knowing much of its complex past and present. To pay the price for this will be, once again, Israelis and Palestinians alike. Here
--
100 years on: The Balfour
Declaration explained
What is the Balfour
Declaration?
The Balfour Declaration ("Balfour's
promise" in Arabic) was a public pledge by Britain in 1917 declaring its
aim to establish "a national home for the Jewish people" in
Palestine.
The statement came in the form of a letter from Britain's then-foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, addressed to Lionel Walter Rothschild, a figurehead of the British Jewish community. (Read Here)
--The statement came in the form of a letter from Britain's then-foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, addressed to Lionel Walter Rothschild, a figurehead of the British Jewish community. (Read Here)
The 100-year-old Letter that
still Divides
The Middle East
Read: Here
--
--
Saudi
offers Abu Dis as future capital of Palestine
December
6, 2017 at 1:31 pm | Published
in: Israel, Middle East, News, Palestine, Saudi Arabia
--
Makkah
and Madinah imams silent on Jerusalem in Friday sermons
December
9, 2017 at 2:03 pm | Published
in: Israel, Middle East, News, Palestine, Saudi Arabia
--
Saudi
Arabia has ordered media outlets in the kingdom to not focus "too much attention" on Washington's
controversial decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, sources have
said.
The
Saudi royal court sent a "severe warning" to
bosses of newspapers and television and radio stations this week about the
issue which has sparked protests across the Arab world, sources told The New
Arab on Thursday.
Speaking
on condition of anonymity, they added that the directive ordered media to
instead "take aim at Iran and other regional
countries" in its coverage.
--
As
Jerusalem burns, pro-MBS Saudi cleric focuses
on... clean socks Here
--
---------------------------------
---
---
---
---
Did
Saudi Arabia Just Try To Give the West Bank to Israel?
The
82-year-old Abbas was summoned to Riyadh on
November 6 by the 32-year-old MBS as part
of the latter’s high-powered effort to engineer a joint Arab-U.S. offensive
against Iran and its allies. He was not the first Arab leader to be invited.
Days before his arrival, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri was strong-armed
by MBS into a sudden, though short-lived, resignation as part of the anti-Iran
offensive.
MBS
was in high dudgeon, according to the source, as he is playing a high-stakes
gamble to cement both his leadership and his corollary offensive. On this
score, MBS announced that the Arab Peace Initiative (API)—a Saudi-sponsored
grand bargain promising Arab recognition of and peace with Israel in return for
the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza with east
Jerusalem as its capital—is effectively dead.
It’s
time for Plan B, declared the crown prince: a Palestinian state in the Gaza
Strip, fattened by undetermined Egyptian transfers of land in the Sinai
Peninsula. When the startled Palestinian leader asked about the place of the
West Bank and East Jerusalem in this scheme, MBS replied, “We can continue to
negotiate about this.”
“What
about Jerusalem, the settlements, [West
Bank] Areas B and C?” Abbas pressed.
“These
will be issues for negotiation, but between two states, and we will help you.”
According
to the source, MBS offered the Palestinian leader $10 billion to sweeten the
bitter pill he had just prescribed. “Abbas can’t say no [to the Saudis],” the
source explained, “but he can’t say yes.” Here
---
Saudi
Crown Prince offered $10 billion to Mahmoud
Abbas to give the West Bank to Israel?
December
14, 2017, 6:18 PM IST
According
to the source, Mohammed bin Salman is playing a
high-stakes gamble to cement both his leadership and his corollary offensive.
On this score, the crown prince announced that the Arab Peace Initiative (API)
is effectively dead. The crown prince declared that it’s time for Plan B, a
Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip. When Mahmood Abbas asked about the place
of the West Bank and East Jerusalem in this scheme, the crown Prince replied, “We can continue to negotiate about this.” He is
also said to have offered the Palestinian leader $10 billion to sweeten the
bitter pill he had just prescribed. Abbas is in dilemma he can neither say no
nor yes. Here
---
Do not forget your Najd
Saudi Crown Prince to 'chase terrorism until it disappears'
November 26, 2017
The 40 members of the Islamic Military Counter Terrorism Coalition
met in Riyadh to launch the alliance that aims to defeat terror both in its
“ideology and in its violence".
He said the Islamic Military Counter Terrorism Coalition aimed to
fight terrorism both in its “ideology and in its violence".
“Today, we will chase it until terrorism has disappeared from the
face of the earth,”
Prince Salman, who is also the Saudi defence minister, told the meeting in Riyadh.
“We haven’t had good co-ordination between each other, today that lack of communication ends because of this coalition.”
---
Prince Salman, who is also the Saudi defence minister, told the meeting in Riyadh.
“We haven’t had good co-ordination between each other, today that lack of communication ends because of this coalition.”
---
When were they moderate?
The
Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman said:
“I will return Saudi Arabia
to moderate Islam”
Mohammed
bin Salman tells the Guardian that ultra-conservative state has been ‘not
normal’ for past 30 years
Saudi
Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, has vowed to return the country to “moderate Islam” …”
“What
happened in the last 30 years is not Saudi Arabia. What happened in the region
in the last 30 years is not the Middle East. After the Iranian revolution in
1979, people wanted to copy this model in different countries, one of them is
Saudi Arabia. We didn’t know how to deal with it. And
the problem spread all over the world. Now is the time to get rid of it.”
Earlier
Prince Mohammed had said: “We are simply reverting
to what we followed – a moderate Islam open to the world and all religions.
70% of the Saudis are younger than 30, honestly we won’t waste 30 years of our
life combating extremist thoughts, we will destroy them now and
immediately.”
--
The
crown prince also announced Saudi Arabia would "eradicate
promoters of extremist thoughts", saying
the country was not like this in the past.
"We are returning to what we were before - a country of
moderate Islam that is open to all religions and to the world,"
--
Madawi
Al-Rasheed,
a Middle East scholar at the London School of Economics, argued in an email
that Saudi Arabia was not one of the many countries where moderate
Islam turned ultraconservative, but was instead an exception. It is a
“unique case of radical religion becoming the official religion of the state
and its legitimacy narrative,” said Rasheed, who cautioned that the Saudi
leadership imprisoned clerics who had attempted to “offer reinterpretations of
Islamic text, for example how Islam and democracy are compatible.” Here
---
We are simply reverting to what we followed
We are returning to what we were before
We are returning to what we were before
the country was not like this in the past.
---
---
The Original Najdi
--
---
(Edited by ADHM)
