The Palestinian Authority sharpened its tone regarding the inauguration of the new American embassy in Jerusalem this coming week.
By: Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News
May 14th will be the latest “day of rage” called for by the Palestinians if the celebration turning the American consulate in Jerusalem into an embassy takes place on its scheduled date, said senior PLO official Ahmad Majdalani.
As reported in the Jerusalem Post, “The fourteenth of this month will be a huge, popular day of rage everywhere,” Majdalani said, according to Voice of Palestine, the official Palestinian Authority (PA) radio station. “Our people will express their rejection of relocating the embassy to occupied Jerusalem.”
What commonly occurs on such days are mass street protests and rioting, with some violently clashing with Israeli security forces, whether at checkpoints or other sites.
According to Palestinian mouthpiece Wafa, other possible steps may include “enhancing popular resistance,” which are code words for terror attacks on Israelis. The Palestinians may also bring more cases against Israelis in the International Criminal Court in the Hague or “revive the Palestinian Jerusalem municipality,” an apparent reference to the PA’s attempt to run the civil affairs of Jerusalem’s Arab inhabitants through Orient House in violation of the Oslo Accords. Israel closed the Orient House in 2001.
The Palestinians have been furious ever since Trump made his historic announcement in December. Using bombastic language, chief negotiator Saeb Erekat, said that it showed a “determination to violate international law, destroy the two-state solution and provoke the feelings of the Palestinian people as well as of all Arabs, Muslims and Christians around the globe.” A wave of demonstrations on the Palestinian street followed, as well protests in many Muslim and Muslim-majority countries.
The PA declared then that the move disqualified the US from acting as an acceptable partner in the peace process, and that it would not accept any plan the Trump’s team would put forward on the issue.
The administration has recently said that its proposals are almost ready, and many rumors of its contents have been publicized in the media, including the idea that Israel would be asked to relinquish control of four Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem to Palestinian control.
The call for a “day of rage” could also be seen as just an echo, however, of the stance taken by the PA just prior to Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, regarding his oft-stated promise to transfer the embassy from Tel Aviv. At that time, PA head Mahmoud Abbas stated that if the president followed through, “The Middle East peace process, and even world peace would be plunged into a crisis that would be impossible to defuse.”
Hamas, which has the Gaza Strip in its grip and has led a month-long series of violent confrontations on its border with Israel that is to culminate next week, has never budged from its attitude that the move was “a declaration of war on all Muslims.”