Lawmakers said the US decision to recognize Beit-ul-Moqaddas as Israel’s capital has in effect been the final nail in the coffin of the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks, rejecting the recently reported US offer to support a Palestinian state excluding the holy city as a “charm offensive”.
Israeli media have recently reported that US President Donald Trump, under pressure from its European allies, has suggested he might be willing to accept a Palestinian state, but that its capital cannot be Beit-ul-Moqaddas.
In a recent talk with ICANA, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, chairman of Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, said, “Islamic countries must not fall for Trump’s tricks, and European countries should know that this is not the way to solve the Palestinian issue.”
Trump upended decades of American policy when he decided to recognize Beit-ul-Moqaddas as the Israeli capital last December, aggravating a decades-old issue that has festered since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, when the Israelis occupied the entire city. The move has never been accepted by the international community.
Unworkable
Boroujerdi described the US offer as yet another “charm offensive”, saying “Trump’s effort to wipe Beit-ul-Moqaddas from this issue will not work.”
“Beit-ul-Moqaddas will remain the eternal capital of Palestine,” he stressed. The top parliamentarian called on European countries to press the US to recognize the holy city’s status before the 1967 war if they are really sincere in their efforts to help Palestinians.
Lawmaker Morteza Saffari described the US remarks and actions after its controversial decision as “merely symbolic moves”, adding that many, even inside the US, are against the relocation of the US embassy.
Pointing to the past US presidents who all refrained from taking such bold moves, Saffari said, “Future US presidents might reverse this decision.”
Saffari said the US attempts suggest Washington has realized how isolated it has become in the international community.
“Even the Europeans have voiced their objection to Trump’s decision,” he said.
Collective Defiance
In a collective act of defiance toward Washington, the United Nations General Assembly voted 128 to 9, with 35 abstentions in December last year, for a resolution demanding that the United States rescind its Dec. 6 declaration on Jerusalem, the contested holy city.
That vote in the 193-nation assembly came after 14 of the 15 UN Security Council members voted in favor of a similar measure. The United States vetoed that draft resolution.
European Union foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, has said the bloc supports “the international consensus from which Trump departed”.
Iran does not recognize the Israeli entity and has suggested holding a free referendum in which all Palestinians—including the refugees, Jews and Christians—can partake as the only way out of the decades-old standoff.
The logical idea has been rejected by the US and Israel and has been widely underreported in the mainstream western media, which ironically portray the 40-year-old Islamic Revolution of Iran and resistance groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah as the stumbling blocks in the way of finding a resolution to the Palestinian issue, ignoring more than 70 years of Israeli killings and lawlessness.