The US Recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s Capital is Complicity in the War Crime

A move which could stir up the hornet’s nest in the Middle East, the US President Donald Trump is planning to move the American embassy to the city of Jerusalem. The act, which will mean the US recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, according to political analysts and leaders is a complicity in the Israeli war crime. 

"Moving the embassy is the same as recognising Jerusalem as Israel's united capital. It's a war crime," said  Nabil Shaath, a senior Palestinian official and former Palestinian foreign minister. “The message to the Palestinians and the Arab world would be clear and provocative and there's no way we or the Arab world could accept it.”

Israel occupied the eastern part of the city during the 1967 war and had been illegally settling Jews in the area. The settlements are in contravention of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, which prohibits countries from moving population into territories occupied in a war. 

The international experts argue that the policies of Israel in the occupied territory amounts to apartheid, and this move by the US is clearly a sign that it does not care about the international laws.

The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), the largest coalition in Palestinian society leading the global BDS movement for Palestinian rights, in a statement said:

“This recognition would be the most serious form of complicity to date by the administration in cementing Israel’s apartheid regime in Jerusalem and accelerating its ethnic cleansing of indigenous Palestinians from their city. It encourages the Israeli government and illegal settlers to steal and destroy more Palestinian homes, expropriate more Palestinian land, and revoke the residency rights of more Palestinians for whom Jerusalem is home."

Jerusalem's status is an extremely sensitive part of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and no country currently has its embassy in the city. Palestinians have long considered East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state. 

The move by Trump administration to shift the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem will also overturn decades of international consensus on Jerusalem.

According to UN General Assembly Resolution (UNGA) 181 (II) of 29 November 1947, Jerusalem is corpus separatum having an international status and which ’shall be administered by the United Nations’. The East Jerusalem was annexed and occupied by the Israel during the 1967 Six-Day war, and the West Jerusalem was taken over by Israel in 1948 Arab-Israel war. 

In 1980, Israel passed a Basic Law which declared Jerusalem, “complete and united,” as the “capital of Israel,”. 

The UN Security Council (UNSC) adopted Resolution 476 stating that “measures which have altered the geographic, demographic and historical character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem are null and void and constitute a flagrant violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War and also constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East.” 

Numerous other UN Security Council Resolutions (251, 252, 267, 298, 2334) have all condemned the Israeli settlement expansion as illegal and as violation International laws. 

Dr Hanan Ashrawi, speaking for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) noted that the Trump administration “is undermining the global rule of law, as well as American standing, credibility, security, and interests around the world.” 

“A change of address would be seen as a US green light for Israel to extend its sovereignty over the city and its holy places, including the al-Aqsa mosque, in the view of Israeli military intelligence”, reports Jonathan Cook, a British author and journalist.

In 1995, the US Congress passed the Jerusalem Embassy Act, which recognised the city of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and mandated a change in the embassy’s location by May 1999. Considering the violent ramifications of such a move across the region, citing the national security concerns the Presidents before Trump used a waiver clause in the act to postpone the implementation. 

The recognition move, expected to be announced soon by President Trump, would undermine the peace efforts and potentially spark violent protests across the region. 

In a statement, Hamas called for Palestinians "to make Friday a day of rage against the occupation, rejecting moving the American embassy to Jerusalem and declaring it the capital of a Zionist entity".