Israeli police stepped up security measures in Arab neighbourhoods in east Jerusalem on Monday, searching trucks and arresting relatives of the Palestinian truck driver who rammed his vehicle into a crowd of Israeli soldiers at a Jerusalem tourist spot the previous day, killing four soldiers and injuring 17 others.

Nine people were arrested, five of them relatives of 28-year-old Fadi Qunbar, the attacker. All arrested were from the Jabel Mukaber neighbourhood of east Jerusalem where Qunbar lived, police said.

Police forces checked drivers and searched parked cars and trucks throughout east Jerusalem in an effort to prevent copycat attacks, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.

An investigation is under way as to how Qunbar managed to make his way on Sunday to the Jerusalem promenade where the soldiers gathered; who owned the truck he drove and whether he planned his attack ahead of time, Rosenfeld said.

Police used concrete slabs to block some entrances of Jabel Mukaber, and a police officer checked cars leaving it. Israeli special forces dismantled a mourning tent erected to receive visitors paying respects for Qunbar, who was fatally shot at the scene of the attack. Overnight, police say, Palestinians shot fireworks at Israeli forces at a police post near the neighbourhood.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said authorities would increase the number of concrete barricades along Jerusalem roads where pedestrians gather, to protect them from similar attacks by vehicles, and that Israeli security agencies are working on ways to detect attackers ahead of time.

“We are under a new kind of attack, the lone attacker that gets inspiration and decides in a moment to act,” Netanyahu said.

Mohammed Qunbar, the attacker’s cousin, said Fadi lived a normal life but carried out the attack as a result of Palestinian anger over what is seen as Israeli encroachment at Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site. Jews revere it as the Temple Mount, and Muslims call it the Noble Sanctuary and the site of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. It has been a frequent scene of violence in the past, as Palestinians have accused Israel of secretly plotting to take over the site, which Israel denies.

“What happened is a normal thing,” Qunbar said of his cousin. “After all, this is a response to what is happening at Al-Aqsa. He was very connected to Al-Aqsa.”

The attack was one of the deadliest in more than a year of Israeli-Palestinian violence. Since September 2015, Palestinian attackers have killed 40 Israelis and two visiting Americans in knife attacks, shootings and assaults using cars to ram into people. During that time, 230 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire.

The toll from Sunday’s attack matched that of the deadliest previous assault — the Tel Aviv shooting last June that was carried out by a pair of gunmen at a popular tourist spot.

Israel says most of the Palestinians killed over the past 16 months were attackers. The Palestinians and rights groups say Israel has at times used excessive force.

Israel says the violence is driven by Palestinian incitement, while Palestinians say it’s the result of nearly 50 years of Israeli occupation and dwindling hopes for an independent state. The violence has slowed in recent months.

The attack came as tensions have been rising in the combustible city following a series of statements by people close to President-elect Donald Trump that he is determined to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. The United States, like other countries, keeps its embassy in Tel Aviv, saying the fate of Jerusalem must be decided in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

Israel claims the entire city as its capital. The Palestinians seek east Jerusalem, captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war, as the capital of a future state. Israel has annexed the eastern sector, home to the Old City and sensitive holy sites, and says it will never allow the city to be divided.

Meanwhile, the mood in Israel has been charged following last week’s manslaughter conviction in a military court of a soldier who killed a badly wounded Palestinian assailant last March as he lay on the ground. The soldier’s sentencing is due next week.</s>Palestinian officials call for protests in mosques to object to the proposed move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and say it would violate Oslo peace agreements

Senior Palestinian officials have warned that the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s recognition of Israel – one of the key pillars of the moribund Oslo peace agreements – is in danger of being revoked if Donald Trump moves the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

The Palestinian leadership is also calling for protests in mosques and churches on Friday and Sunday to object to the move, calling for opposition to the plan “from Pakistan to Tehran, from Lebanon to Oman”.

Moving the US embassy to Jerusalem is highly contentious as it would recognise Israel’s exclusive claim to the city, most of which was annexed illegally after the 1967 war. The Palestinians also see it as their future capital.

Moving US embassy to Jerusalem could provoke violent 'chaos', experts warn Read more

Senior Palestinian negotiator Mohammed Shtayyeh told reporters on Tuesday that any move to relocate the US embassy would provoke a reaction. “One of the measures we are considering seriously is the issue of mutual recognition between the PLO and Israel. [It] is not valid any more doing this,” he said referring to the proposed embassy move.

The warning came amid increasingly stark warnings over the risk of an “explosion of violence” in the region if the US embassy is moved, and after Abbas himself wrote to Trump to reconsider, citing the dangers in the move.



In his letter – disclosed on Monday and also copied to other world leaders – Abbas told Trump moving the embassy “will likely have [a] disastrous impact on the peace process, on the two-state solution and on the stability and security of the entire region, since Israel’s decision to annex East Jerusalem contradicts with international law”.

The comments came after the officials said they had been told by diplomatic contacts that Trump may be preparing to announce the relocation of the US embassy during his inauguration speech on 20 January. CNN reported on Monday that Trump’s transition team had told “allies” that it plans to go ahead with the relocation.

That fear follows the introduction of new legislation in Congress a week ago by three Republican Senators, including Ted Cruz, demanding the embassy be located in Jerusalem.



Palestinians have also been alarmed by Trump’s appointment of figures who have supported Jewish settlement building in the occupied territories.



That includes Trump’s proposed new ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, who has questioned the two-state solution, and most recently Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, whose family charity has given money to one of the West Bank’s most hardline settlements.

Friedman himself – an extreme rightwinger who has compared liberal US Jews to kapos or concentration camp guards chosen from among the prisoners – made clear on his appointment that he looked forward to taking up his post in Jerusalem.

Donald Trump's Israel ambassador is hardline pro-settler lawyer Read more

The chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, had floated the idea of revoking recognition of Israel at a conference in Washington last month, a proposal that has gained momentum ahead of a peace conference in Paris on Sunday on the Middle East peace process.

Briefing journalists on diplomatic moves ahead of that gathering of some 70 countries in the French capital, Shtayyeh reinforced recent statements by other senior Palestinian politicians and warned that the two-state solution would not be able to survive a move by the Trump administration that would be seen in the Arab world as a unilateral recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Shtayyeh also suggested that such a move would also be a breach of US commitments under the 1995 Oslo peace agreement. “The US is a witness to the Oslo agreement, signed in the White House in front of President Clinton. This is an international commitment.”

While Palestinian officials had been careful to be diplomatic following Trump’s election, in recent weeks they have become more and more explicit about their concerns.



Asked about officials in Trump’s team who would deal with the Israeli-Palestinian question, Shtayyeh was pessimistic.

“The indications are negative,” Shtayyeh said of Trump’s recent appointments, adding: “If Trump moves the [US] embassy to Jerusalem that would be the end of the two-state solution. Trump would be giving away something that is not his to give.”

Shtayyeh said that the Palestinian leadership had received warnings that Trump might announce the relocation on inauguration days from “American circles and diplomatic friends”.

Shtayyeh’s remarks came following the leak of the draft resolution text to be considered in Paris on Sunday, which suggests participants will be asked to bind themselves to opposing any unilateral moves on changing Israel’s pre-1967 borders, including on the final status of Jerusalem that was left to be negotiated after the Oslo peace accords were signed.



The draft text – leaked to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz – suggests that moves that began with the adoption by the UN security council of a resolution condemning Israeli settlement building, seem set to continue right up to Trump’s inauguration.

The US embassy has been located on Tel Aviv’s HaYarkon Street for half a century. US state department policy has long held that the status of Jerusalem will only be determined in final talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

Although the US Congress passed a law ordering the move to Jerusalem in 1995, every president since then has exercised a six-month waiver to prevent it taking place, usually citing “national security concerns”.

The Palestinian comments also join warnings from other international officials in recent days alerting to the dangers in moving the American embassy.

A Jordanian government spokesman warned last week that the move would have “catastrophic implications on several levels, including the regional situation” warning it could also affect bilateral relations with the US.

On Friday, the US secretary of state, John Kerry, echoed that view in an interview with CBS, warning that the plan, outlined by Trump on the campaign trail and reiterated by members of his team since, could cause an “an explosion, an absolute explosion in the region, not just in the West Bank, and perhaps even in Israel itself, but throughout the region”.

Kerry also warned that It would “have profound impact on the readiness of Jordan and Egypt to be able to be supportive and engaged with Israel as they are today”, he warned.

</s>Israeli police stepped up security measures in Arab neighbourhoods in east Jerusalem on Monday, searching trucks and arresting relatives of the Palestinian truck driver who rammed his vehicle into a crowd of Israeli soldiers at a Jerusalem tourist spot the previous day, killing four soldiers and injuring 17 others.

Nine people were arrested, five of them relatives of 28-year-old Fadi Qunbar, the attacker. All arrested were from the Jabel Mukaber neighbourhood of east Jerusalem where Qunbar lived, police said.

Police forces checked drivers and searched parked cars and trucks throughout east Jerusalem in an effort to prevent copycat attacks, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.

An investigation is under way as to how Qunbar managed to make his way on Sunday to the Jerusalem promenade where the soldiers gathered; who owned the truck he drove and whether he planned his attack ahead of time, Rosenfeld said.

Police used concrete slabs to block some entrances of Jabel Mukaber, and a police officer checked cars leaving it. Israeli special forces dismantled a mourning tent erected to receive visitors paying respects for Qunbar, who was fatally shot at the scene of the attack. Overnight, police say, Palestinians shot fireworks at Israeli forces at a police post near the neighbourhood.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said authorities would increase the number of concrete barricades along Jerusalem roads where pedestrians gather, to protect them from similar attacks by vehicles, and that Israeli security agencies are working on ways to detect attackers ahead of time.

“We are under a new kind of attack, the lone attacker that gets inspiration and decides in a moment to act,” Netanyahu said.

Mohammed Qunbar, the attacker’s cousin, said Fadi lived a normal life but carried out the attack as a result of Palestinian anger over what is seen as Israeli encroachment at Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site. Jews revere it as the Temple Mount, and Muslims call it the Noble Sanctuary and the site of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. It has been a frequent scene of violence in the past, as Palestinians have accused Israel of secretly plotting to take over the site, which Israel denies.

“What happened is a normal thing,” Qunbar said of his cousin. “After all, this is a response to what is happening at Al-Aqsa. He was very connected to Al-Aqsa.”

The attack was one of the deadliest in more than a year of Israeli-Palestinian violence. Since September 2015, Palestinian attackers have killed 40 Israelis and two visiting Americans in knife attacks, shootings and assaults using cars to ram into people. During that time, 230 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire.

The toll from Sunday’s attack matched that of the deadliest previous assault — the Tel Aviv shooting last June that was carried out by a pair of gunmen at a popular tourist spot.

Israel says most of the Palestinians killed over the past 16 months were attackers. The Palestinians and rights groups say Israel has at times used excessive force.

Israel says the violence is driven by Palestinian incitement, while Palestinians say it’s the result of nearly 50 years of Israeli occupation and dwindling hopes for an independent state. The violence has slowed in recent months.

The attack came as tensions have been rising in the combustible city following a series of statements by people close to President-elect Donald Trump that he is determined to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. The United States, like other countries, keeps its embassy in Tel Aviv, saying the fate of Jerusalem must be decided in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

Israel claims the entire city as its capital. The Palestinians seek east Jerusalem, captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war, as the capital of a future state. Israel has annexed the eastern sector, home to the Old City and sensitive holy sites, and says it will never allow the city to be divided.

Meanwhile, the mood in Israel has been charged following last week’s manslaughter conviction in a military court of a soldier who killed a badly wounded Palestinian assailant last March as he lay on the ground. The soldier’s sentencing is due next week.</s>Palestinian leaders also called for protests against the proposed move, and for opposition to any relocation to come "from Pakistan to Tehran, from Lebanon to Oman."

Senior Palestinian negotiator Mohammed Shtayyeh warned that any effort to relocate the US embassy to Jerusalem would result in a response.

​"One of the measures we are considering seriously is the issue of mutual recognition between the PLO and Israel. [It] is not valid any more doing this," he said, in reference to the proposed embassy relocation.

The location of the US' Israeli embassy is a highly contentious matter, with those opposed to a relocation arguing that moving it to Jerusalem would imply Israel's exclusive claim to the city, despite the fact that large parts of it were illegally annexed after the 1967 war.

Palestinian officials also see the city as the capital of any future state, further complicating matters.

​There are concerns among Palestinian circles that incoming president Donald Trump may relocate the US embassy from its current location in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, following reports and leaks from diplomatic sources.

The speculation led Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to write to Trump, warning that moving the embassy "will likely have [a] disastrous impact on the peace process, on the two-state solution and on the stability and security of the entire region, since Israel's decision to annex East Jerusalem contradicts with international law."

​Shtayyeh echoed Abbas' concerns over the future of the two-state solution should the embassy be relocated, also suggesting that a move to Jerusalem would be in breach of the 1995 Oslo peace agreement.

"If Trump moves the [US] embassy to Jerusalem that would be the end of the two-state solution. Trump would be giving away something that is not his to give," he said.

"The US is a witness to the Oslo agreement, signed in the White House in front of President Clinton. This is an international commitment."

There are also concerns about the broader implications of any such US embassy switch, with fears it may erode American influence in the region.

A Jordanian government spokesperson last week said any relocation would have "catastrophic implications on several levels, including the regional situation," while outgoing US Secretary of State, John Kerry, told CBS that such a development would cause an "an explosion, an absolute explosion in the region, not just in the West Bank, and perhaps even in Israel itself, but throughout the region."

​Kerry added that moving the embassy would "have a profound impact on the readiness of Jordan and Egypt to be able to be supportive and engaged with Israel as they are today."</s>Senior Palestinian officials have announced they may no longer recognise the state of Israel should Donald Trump's incoming administration move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

According to Mohammed Ishtayeh, an adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian officials were told that Trump may confirm relocation plan during his inauguration on 20 January. He quoted "American circles and diplomatic friends" as their sources.

Speaking to the press on 10 January, Ishtayeh warned this move would mark the end of US-led efforts to negotiate a two-state solution as enshrined in the UN resolution 181.

"If [Trump] does so, frankly, we think this is the end of the two-state solution," Ishtayeh said, as reported by the Associated Press. "I hope President Trump does not underestimate the importance of Jerusalem for the Palestinians, Muslims and Christians."

If the relocation was confirmed, Ishmayeh said the Palestinian leadership would consider revoking a mutual recognition deal that was signed between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) as part of the US-brokered 1993 Oslo accords.

Abbas'd adviser also called for protests after Friday prayers across the Muslim world on 13 January. The Palestinian authorities asked churches in the region to ring their bells in protest on Sunday too, he added.

President Abbas wrote a letter to Trump on 9 January, warning him of the potentially "devastating" consequences of the embassy move. According to the official Palestinian news agency, Abbas also contacted other world leaders for support, asking that they made "every possible effort" to prevent the move. The Palestinian leader is heading to Europe over the weekend, and is going to meet Pope Francis on Saturday 14 January.

The US already has consular offices in Jerusalem, but Trump promised he would "recognise Jerusalem as the undivided capital of the State of Israel" after meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in September. The president-elect pick for ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, also supports moving the embassy and Republican senators have proposed a bill which aims to do just that.

According to the internationally-backed two-state solution, Jerusalem would become the shared capital of the state of Israel and of a Palestinian state which would comprise East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. East Jerusalem is currently under Israeli occupation, as a recent UN resolution reiterated, demanding a halt to "all Israeli settlement activities" to preserve the two-state solution. Outgoing Secretary of state John Kerry defended the need for a two-state solution to the conflict in a fiery speech in December.</s>Exclusive: If President Obama had confronted Israel over its illegal settlements earlier, he might have really achieved something, but his U.N. abstention as he heads out the door is better than nothing, observes Marjorie Cohn.

For the first time in his eight-year presidency, Barack Obama said no to Israel. When the Security Council voted to condemn Israel for building illegal settlements in occupied Palestinian territories, the Obama administration abstained, allowing the resolution to pass.

Resolution 2334 says the settlements have “no legal validity,” calls them “a flagrant violation under international law,” and demands Israel “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities.”

Although 2334 is consistent with prior resolutions of the council, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threw a tantrum, calling the US abstention a “declaration of war.” In light of Obama’s unwavering enabling of Israel’s illegal policies, Netanyahu was likely shocked that Obama finally said no.

The United States, a permanent member of the council, vetoed a resolution in 2011 that would have condemned the building of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territories. And in 2014, the U.S. opposed a draft resolution demanding Israel’s withdrawal from the West Bank within three years.

Since 1967, Israel has transferred more than a half million of its own citizens into Palestinian territories, continuing to build settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

In 2004, the International Court of Justice affirmed that the Palestinian territories are under Israeli occupation and Israel’s settlement building violates the Fourth Geneva Convention.

A state occupying territory not its own cannot build settlements on that territory and transfer its own citizens into them. Article 8.2(b)(viii) of the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court (ICC) defines “the transfer, directly or indirectly, by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies” as a war crime.

Israel took over the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem by military force in 1967 and has held it under military occupation ever since.

Like Security Council Resolution 242, passed in 1967, Resolution 2334 reiterates “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war.” Although Resolution 242 called for “withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict,” Israel continues to occupy the Palestinian territories it acquired in the “Six-Day War.”

“Over 4.5 million Palestinians live in these occupied territories, but are not citizens of Israel,” Jimmy Carter wrote in the New York Times. “Most live largely under Israeli military rule, and do not vote in Israel’s national elections.”

Israel exercises complete control over every aspect of Palestinian life in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. That includes borders, airspace, ingress and egress of people and goods, and the seashore and waters off the coast of Gaza. The occupation violates fundamental human rights of the Palestinians.

Flavia Pansieri, former U.N. deputy high commissioner for human rights, said last year that human rights violations “fuel and shape the conflict” in the occupied Palestinian territories, adding, “[h]uman rights violations in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are both cause and consequence of the military occupation and ongoing violence, in a bitter cyclical process with wider implications for peace and security in the region.”

Building illegal settlements in occupied Palestinian territories is not the only war crime Israeli leaders have committed. In 2014, Israel invaded Gaza and killed more than 2,000 Palestinians, the majority of them civilians. Nearly 10,000 Palestinians were wounded, more than 2,000 of them children. Tens of thousands of Palestinians lost their homes and infrastructure was severely damaged. Numerous schools, U.N. places of refuge, hospitals, ambulances and mosques were intentionally targeted.

Israel used the “Dahiya doctrine” to apply “disproportionate force” and cause “great damage and destruction to civilian property and infrastructure, and suffering to civilians populations,” as defined in the 2009 U.N. Human Rights Council (Goldstone) report. Those acts constitute evidence of war crimes under Article 8 (2)(a) of the Rome Statute.

The ICC can investigate and prosecute these crimes. Yet, in order to prevent such investigation and prosecution, the United States consistently opposed Palestine becoming a party to the Rome Statute. Palestine, which was recognized as a non-member observer State by the U.N. General Assembly, acceded to the Rome Statute in January 2015 and asked the ICC to investigate Israel for building illegal settlements and committing war crimes in Gaza.

In January 2015, Fatou Bensouda, the ICC prosecutor, opened a preliminary investigation into the illegal settlements and Israel’s 2014 bombing of Gaza. Netanyahu is upset because the new Security Council resolution bolsters the case for ICC war crimes prosecution of Israeli leaders.

The United States’ unwavering support for Israel violates U.S. law. Under the Leahy Law, military units that commit human rights abuses cannot receive U.S. training or weapons, and individuals who commit human rights abuses are denied U.S. visas. The State Department’s annual report has documented Israeli violations. And the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 prohibits assistance to any country “which engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.”

Yet, throughout his presidency, Obama has unconditionally supported Israel and shielded it from accountability for the war crimes of building settlements and targeting civilians in Gaza.

In September, Obama promised Israel a record $38 billion in military assistance over the next 10 years, becoming the strongest financial supporter of Israel ever to occupy the White House. Obama, whom Israeli journalist Gideon Levy dubbed “the patron of the occupation,” increased the amount of money the U.S. provides Israel each year from $3.1 to $3.8 billion.

Netanyahu called the increase in U.S. aid “unprecedented” and “historic,” characterizing it as “the greatest accomplishment since sliced bread,” according to Aaron David Miller, vice president of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “The bond between the United States and Israel is unbreakable,” Obama declared, as he and Netanyahu shook hands.

The annual $3.8 billion, more money than the U.S. gives to any other country, will fund the continuing Israeli military occupation of Palestinian lands, now in its fifth decade. Obama, however, is to be commended for finally standing up to Israel, albeit at the 11th hour. We cannot expect President-elect Donald Trump to follow suit.

Trump intervened unsuccessfully to prevent Resolution 2334 from coming to the council floor. He stated he will move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, even though, as Resolution 2334 states, East Jerusalem is occupied Palestinian territory. David Friedman, Trump’s incoming ambassador to Israel, is notorious for funding the rightwing orthodox Beit El settlement near the West Bank city of Ramallah.

We can hope Trump will listen to Gen. James Mattis, his nominee for Secretary of Defense. “I paid a military security price every day as a commander of CENTCOM because the Americans were seen as biased in support of Israel,” Mattis said at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado in 2013.

Mattis criticized Israel for building settlements in the occupied West Bank, saying they “are going to make it impossible to maintain the two-state option.” He added that the settlements might weaken Israel as a Jewish and Democratic state and could lead to Israel becoming an “apartheid” state.

“If I’m in Jerusalem and I put 500 Jewish settlers out here to the east and there’s 10,000 Arab settlers in here, if we draw the border to include them, either it ceases to be a Jewish state or you say the Arabs don’t get to vote — apartheid,” Mattis said.

Meanwhile, Resolution 2334 has propelled the illegality of Israel’s settlements into the public discourse. While Israel has pledged to defy the council and continue building illegal settlements, Jewish Voice for Peace and other human rights organizations have called for “increasing grassroots pressure on Israel, through Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions [BDS] campaigns, until full human rights of Palestinians are realized.”

Indeed, the text of Resolution 2334 implicitly invites countries to engage in BDS by saying they should “distinguish . . . between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967.”

Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace. Her most recent book is ‘Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues.’ Visit her website at http://marjoriecohn.com/ and follow her on Twitter @MarjorieCohn.</s>Palestinian leaders have threatened to withdraw their recognition of Israel if President-elect Donald Trump moves the US embassy to Jerusalem, according to a senior adviser to the Palestinian president.

The Palestinian authorities have also called for protests against the potential move in mosques and churches.

During his election campaign, Mr Trump vowed to relocate the US diplomatic operation to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, prompting intense criticism from both the international community and security analysts, who warned the symbolic move could spark violence.

High-ranking negotiator Mohammad Shtayyeh said such a move would be a “slap on the face of the international community” that would bring an “end to the two-state solution”, the Financial Times reported.

Mr Shtayyeh promised that the Palestinian authorities would retaliate if it went ahead saying: “One of the measures we are considering seriously [is] that the issue of mutual recognition between the The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and Israel is not any more valid,” he said.

The recognition of Israel by the PLO – an umbrella group representing Palestinian political factions – was a key outcome of the Oslo peace accords signed in 1993.

Mr Shtayyeh claimed the Palestinian authorities had received warnings that Mr Trump may announce the move during his inauguration speech on 20 January from “American circles and diplomatic friends”.

Earlier on Tuesday Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas wrote to the incoming US President claiming the proposal would have a "disastrous impact on the peace process".

One influential imam said it was as good as “a declaration of war".

Jerusalem is significant in a number of religious traditions and its status has been disputed for decades.

While Israel considers the city its capital, Palestinians claim east Jerusalem would be the capital of any future Palestinian state.

Israel annexed much of the city illegally in 1967 and it is likely to be part of any eventual peace agreement.

Mr Trump's election promises to move the embassy have been supported by his appointment of figures who are pro-Israeli settlements, including hardliner David Friedman, who will serve as the US ambassador to Israel.

Mr Friedman has previously called President Barack Obama an anti-Semite and suggested that Jewish Americans who advocate a two-state solution are "far worse" than those who policed their fellow Jews in Nazi concentration camps.

In December, senior Trump aide Kellyanne Conway said moving the embassy would be a "big priority” for the incoming administration.</s>Whatever the motivation of the Obama administration, the events of the waning days of last year mark a dramatic low point in U.S.-Israel relations. The Kerry speech has commanded the most recent attention, but the disastrous decision to abstain on U.N. Security Council Resolution 2443 is more likely to be recorded as a milestone that doomed the peace process. It is a moment that could trigger any number of highly destructive consequences for Israel and the two-state solution that the administration claims to champion.

To start with, the abstention represents an incredibly negative bookend that closes the foreign policy section of the Obama library.

Indeed, the Obama administration’s Israel policy seemed uneven at best and unfair at worst. There were many moments that fed the skepticism of the pro-Israel, pro-peace community. These include the initial decision to skip Israel in a series of speeches across the region in 2009; the ill-advised decision to force the Israeli government to freeze settlement construction before supporting peace talks that same year; the push in 2015 for the Iran nuclear deal despite the protests of Israelis across the political spectrum and the blithe dismissal of the genocidal rhetoric of the Islamic Republic; and the complete failure to deal with surging non-state actors like Hezbollah because of their alignment with Iran.

It should be noted that the administration has stood by Israel in other respects. The president might point to prior Security Council vetoes and the landmark $38 billion arms deal concluded earlier in 2016. Yet, the personal rancor between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seemed to drive the dynamic of the bilateral relationship for nearly eight years. The patronizing tone of Secretary of State John Kerry’s speech seemed familiar to many Israelis, who had grown weary of hectoring from the Obama administration.

Whatever the motivation, the failure to veto Resolution 2443 was a disaster which will have a number of highly destructive consequences for Israel and the peace process. I can see several constituencies that will be impacted by this decision, all in ways that will hamper, not help, the peace process.

First, the Palestinians. Prior to this vote, Palestinian leadership had embraced a core philosophy of rejectionism and negation, denying the legitimacy of Israel and the 3,000- year historic connection of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel.

 And yet, Resolution 2443 gave this no mention and Kerry elided this fact in his remarks. So it should be no surprise that the Palestinians undoubtedly will learn the wrong lesson from these events.

And yet, it is the lesson they have inculcated repeatedly after anti-Israel international decisions. Simply put, time is on their side and they don’t have to accept the legitimacy of the Jewish state because Israel eventually will disappear if they are only patient. This mantra has been destructive to chances for peace and destructive to the interests of the Palestinian people. The vote ensures its continuation.

Second, the international community. The anti-Israel forces already had great influence throughout the U.N. system, particularly at the U.N. Human Rights Council and UNESCO. Today they likely feel even more emboldened. More extreme language and resolutions surely will follow, playing right into the hands of those individuals here in the United States who would like to see the United Nations disappear.

Third, the radical left. Extreme elements of the Left long ago adopted the cause of delegitmization of Israel and embraced tactics like the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign. We have seen this trend in Europe, creating negative consequences for Jewish communities on the ground in numerous countries.

We also have seen this radicalism infect certain elements of the left here in the United States, such as campus organizations, some Protestant denominations and even some labor unions. The controversial Movement for Black Lives platform released earlier this summer seemed to draw directly from the playbook of this crowd.

This group likely will see this vote as extending an imprimatur to their anti-Israel agenda. We can expect such groups to view this as a seminal moment to step up their activity. And yet, such boycotts and hostility make peace far more distant.

Finally, the far right in Israel. There are numerous groups inside Israel that oppose a two-state solution and seek to create facts on the ground to obviate the possibility of such a solution. They will use the Security Council vote and the U.S. abstention to argue that the world is against Israel, that Israel needs to do what it has to do since there is no partner for peace and even the United States can’t be counted on. The U.N. vote will benefit those who are against a reasonable solution to the age-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Now, although President Obama is the de facto leader of the Democratic Party, a silver lining in this fiasco was the apparent resuscitation of the bipartisan case for U.S. support for the Jewish state. In the wake of widespread Democratic support for the Iran deal and despite the far-left leanings of Bernie Sanders and many of his supporters, Democratic leadership in the Senate and House rose to denounce the U.S. abstention with a fervor that matched the outrage of their GOP colleagues. Still, the drift of some elements of the party toward radicalism may reinforce an already perceived gap in support for Israel between Democrats and Republicans.

Responsible leaders on both sides should collaborate to dial down the rhetoric and prevent Israel from becoming a political football. This may score points in the short term with certain segments of the electorate, but it’s a bad long-term trend for the bilateral relationship.

So what is there to do to repair the damage? First, friends of Israel everywhere must stand together now more than ever in support of the Jewish state. We must make the case that the international community’s approach to the conflict has gone off the tracks by giving the Palestinians a free pass when they remain the party mainly responsible for the absence of negotiations and continued conflict. We must shine a light on the three-pronged Palestinian strategy of intransigence, internationalization and incitement even as we advocate to Israeli leaders that they hold open the prospect of negotiation as the alternative to Palestinian rejectionism.

We also must do everything we can to help Israel keep open the possibility of two states for two peoples as the only prospect for peace for both parties. The so-called one-state solution would be the end of the Jewish state. Annexation of Palestinian land in the West Bank will not provide an exit from this impasse. In lieu of a robust political process, those passionate about fostering a two-state solution may need to adopt new approaches, such as supporting person-to-person initiatives to build positive cultural and social relations at the grassroots level between Israelis and Palestinians. It might mean supporting collaborative economic projects and investment efforts that can create a shared economic future and rekindle hope among entrepreneurs and the local business communities.

It might necessitate interfaith programs to strengthen ties between Jewish and Muslim clergy and their congregants.

Still, by all measures, this is a very bad moment. There is much work to be done, especially for Israelis to trust America as its most reliable ally. A strong and rational approach to these complicated issues can prevail if we all come together to make it happen.

Jonathan Greenblatt is CEO and national director of the Anti-Defamation League. A version of this article first appeared in The Jerusalem Post.</s>Palestinian citizens of Israel have announced a nationwide strike after Israeli authorities demolished 11 Palestinian homes.

"We condemn the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu personally for these crimes, that reflect his racist mentality and aim to divert attention away from his scandals," said Mohammad Baraka, the head of the High Follow-up Committee, a representative body for the Palestinian citizens of the state.

In a statement issued on Tuesday, the committee stressed the importance of standing in unity and joining ranks to repel "the new attack that the government has taken against us".

The homes were demolished on Tuesday in the city of Qalansawe in central Israel, on the pretext that they were built without a permit, but Palestinians say their permit applications are almost always denied causing them to build their homes illegally.

The strike is taking place across all Palestinian towns within Israel and in all areas of public life, including schools. Activist and professor of architecture Yosef Jabareen said half a million Palestinians face displacement in Israel and East Jerusalem.

"Five hundred thousand people living in 100,000 homes within Israel and East Jerusalem are under threat of having their homes demolished," Jabareen told Al Jazeera. Approximately 56,000 of those homes are in the Negev region in the south, the triangle in central Israel, and in the Galilee region in the north, while the other 44,000 homes are in occupied East Jerusalem.

During the past two decades approximately 5,000 Palestinian homes in Israel have been demolished, Jabareen estimates.

"There is an obvious plan to halt any prospect of Palestinian cities naturally developing and expanding as our population grows. There is systematic ghettoisation of our towns and a strategy to confine us within our existing spaces."

Palestinians have jurisdiction over only 2.3 percent of the entire state land, causing severe overcrowding in towns and villages and the building of houses without the required permits.

Since the creation of the Israeli state in 1948, no new Palestinian towns or cities were built, in contrast to the 600 Jewish municipalities that have been developed, according to Adalah, the legal centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel.

"It is so hard to develop our towns because there are no construction master plans for our cities," said Jabareen. "Israel is a very central state - all the planning decisions have to come from the government which will not make moves to develop our villages. If it were up to local authorities, we would not have this problem."

OPINION: In Israel, racism is the law

There are 1.7 million Palestinian citizens of Israel who who exist as second-class citizens in a "state for the Jewish people".

According to the Adalah, Palestinian citizens of Israel suffer from more than 50 discriminatory laws limiting their access to state resources and political expression. Nadim Nashif, an activist within the Palestinian community in Israel, believes that Israel's tactic of suppression is the same whether it is applied in the occupied territories or in Israel against Palestinians.

"This is about the same lack of rights that Palestinians experience, whether it is in the 1948 or the 1967 areas," Nashif told Al Jazeera.

Activists believe the reason Israel is now taking action against homes built without permits is to "prove to the Jewish Israelis" that they will "compensate for evacuating settlers in the Amona outpost" in the occupied West Bank, said Nashif.

In December, Netanyahu was quoted by the Israeli daily Haaretz as suggesting that he would push for demolitions of Arab homes to appease Israelis. "There will be no double standards regarding construction," Netanyahu reportedly told a source quoted by Haaretz, prompting outrage among Palestinian politicians in Israel.

Nashif believes this strike is more symbolic than effective.

"We've gone on strike, but this doesn't affect the state. We need to apply pressure in a way that will cause the state to respond to us - like stopping traffic or organising large protests."</s>And I continue to think that, even battered and bruised, abandoned by some, rejected by others, it is the only solution that, over time, will allow Israel to remain at once the Jewish state conceived by its pioneers and the exemplary democracy whose spirit and institutions seventy years of war, open and otherwise, have not managed to erode.

I know that news moves fast. Given that fast pace—especially at a moment when the United States has eyes and ears only for the “transition,” for the acts and utterances of the president-elect, for the government that he is setting up, and for his wife, his daughter, and little Barron—this story may strike some as already being ancient history. Nevertheless, it has been swirling around in my head for two weeks. And here’s why. (I will amplify on these thoughts at the 92d Street Y in New York on Wednesday, January 11.)

1. There was the source, of course: the United Nations, an organization that for decades has not ceased to condemn, vilify, and ostracize Israel, becoming in the process one of the last places on earth where one could expect to encounter, on this question as on many others, a balanced or courageous stance.

2. Then there was the spectacle of those fifteen raised hands, the same hands that were so pointedly not raised a few days before to stop the massacre in Aleppo. How could they dare to portray little Israel as the great barrier to peace? How could they imagine that by doing so they might recover in the applause of those in attendance a share of their lost honor? And what is one to make of the splintered and anemic international community trying to repair itself on the back of the Jewish state? All of this was as pathetic as it was ghoulish.

3. There was the poor wording of the text of the resolution, which, despite the phrase condemning “all acts of violence against civilians, including acts of terror” (the words “including acts of terror” lead one to wonder about the other “acts of violence” that are being put on the same plane as these “acts of terror”), assigned responsibility for blocking the peace process primarily, if not solely, to Israel. What about Palestinian obstinacy? What about the double-speak of the Ramallah government? What about the Christmas trees on which, in some quarters of Arab Jerusalem, people hung, in place of garlands, photos of “martyrs” killed in “combat”—killed, that is, while trying to stab Israeli civilians? None of that, for the drafters of the resolution or for those who voted for and celebrated it, apparently was an “obstacle to peace.” Nothing was equal in perfidy to Netanyahu’s policy of expanding the settlements.

4. There was the question of the settlements and the manner in which the issue was, once again, presented. That the continued pursuit of settlements in the West Bank is wrong—that is obvious. And that there is a growing number of hawks on the Israeli right who, with Benjamin Netanyahu at their head, dream of seeing the process accelerate into an irreversible situation—that is probable. But it is not true that we are already there. It is not accurate to present the building effort as a methodical and malign proliferation metastasizing throughout the future Palestine and dismembering it in advance. The reality, readily apparent to anyone who takes the trouble to analyze matters without blinkers or prejudice, is that the territorial concentration of the densest settlements is creating a situation that, except for the number of settlements, is not radically different from that which prevailed in the Sinai Peninsula before the 1982 agreement with Egypt or in the Gaza Strip before the redeployment undertaken by Ariel Sharon in 2004. In fact, the great majority of the building is still being done close enough to the Green Line to permit, when the time comes, an exchange of territory and, elsewhere (that is, at the most distant and isolated sites) to allow for admittedly painful evacuations. (Not to mention the option that I am amazed is so seldom raised—namely, that Jews should be invited to stay and live in the new Palestine, just as 1.5 million Palestinians now live in Israel as full citizens.)

5. And finally there was, for the first time in forty years, the surprise abstention of the United States delivered by Ambassador Samantha Power, followed a few days later by Secretary of State John Kerry’s long speech in support. People can say what they will about this. But to see this administration, which has conceded so much to Iran, offered so little resistance to Russia, and invented, in Syria, the doctrine of a red line that turned out to be red only with the blood of Syrians sacrificed on the altar of a renunciation of power and of law; to see that same administration trying to compensate for all this by speaking up at the last minute against the planet’s black sheep, the scruffy prime minister of Israel—what could be more abject?

I no longer recognized, in this facile effort to regain lost authority on the cheap, the obscure young senator from Illinois whom I met in Boston one day in July 2004: he evoked for me, then, the shared glory—in his eyes, parallel and commensurate glories—of the American civil rights movement and the Jewish people’s new flight from Egypt, as represented by Zionism.

But I sense only too clearly now, on the eve of the inauguration of a new president who gives us many reasons to worry, the early warning signs of a broken humanity, resounding more loudly than ever before with the clash of empires and of competing visions of the world, doomed to suffer the eternal recurrence of injustice and carnage—but in which “the longest hate” once again becomes a shared religion.
The Palestinian National Authority threatens to revoke its recognition of Israel (guaranteed by their signing of the Oslo I Accord in 1993) if the United States, under the presidency of Donald Trump, moves its Embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.