On Wednesday evening, hours after declaring that the U.S. will recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, President Trump greeted friends and family who gathered at the White House to mark the start of Hanukkah.
“Well, I know for a fact there are a lot of happy people in this room,” he said to applause. “Jerusalem.” The declaration may have played well in the room, but it flopped everywhere else:
Thousands of Palestinian protestors took to the streets in the West Bank and Gaza; at least two protestors were killed and 98 wounded. (Haaretz)
Israeli forces fired at protestors along the border with Gaza, wounding at least 31 people (Reuters); Israel alleged that rockets were launched from Gaza into Israel. (Washington Post)
Protests took place across Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, Turkey, Tunisia and Iran, as well as in Malaysia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Indian-administered Kashmir and Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority country. (BBC)
Fourteen members of the U.N. Security Council have criticized the move. (AP)
The move embarrasses both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, two of the U.S.’s main allies in the Sunni Muslim world. (FT)
The U.N.’s envoy to the Middle East said that the comments by Trump undermined a decades-old consensus. (Guardian)
The status of Jerusalem is among the top sticking points in the peace process.
For Trump the declaration represented payback to a political base that includes pro-Israel Republicans and evangelical Christians. “While previous presidents have made this a major campaign promise, they failed to deliver,” he said. Today, I am delivering.”
To bolster the point, the White House released testimonials from Republicans (and one Democrat).
No nation has an embassy in Jerusalem. The declaration by Trump affirms America’s status as an outlier in a world that is moving on without the U.S. and that presidents of both parties once worked to inspire.