Pro-Con: Did Trump make a mistake by designating Jerusalem the capital of Israel?

Yes: Trump’s action sets back efforts to achieve a lasting peace

By designating Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, President Donald Trump is telling the world that when it comes to Israel, might makes right.

Washington’s explicit endorsement of Israel’s illegal annexation of East Jerusalem strikes a blow to the Palestinians and Israelis nonviolently working to end Israel’s military occupation and push for lasting peace.

Less than two weeks out from this fateful decision, Palestinian and Israeli blood has already been shed, and undoubtedly the death toll will mount as Israel further entrenches its military occupation and violent extremists continue to draw validation.

In the U.S. media, the violence of Israel’s military occupation is largely ignored, while the absence of deadly attacks against Israelis or at U.S. embassies worldwide has been cited as evidence that the impact of Trump’s decision was “merely symbolic.”

It may be merely symbolic for Trump’s billionaire donors, including Trump’s top campaign contributor Sheldon Adelson, who shelled out millions for this policy change.

However, on the ground, Trump’s decision has flesh and blood consequences.

In its aftermath, Israeli attacks have killed at least eight Palestinians, two Israelis were stabbed by Palestinians, and Israeli forces have arrested hundreds and injured more than 800 during protests against Trump’s decision. Israeli airstrikes have pounded the Gaza Strip, and Hamas launched several rockets at Israel.

One of the Palestinians killed was a paraplegic activist named Ibrahim Abu Thuayeh. He joined thousands in protesting on Gaza’s border, and Israeli soldiers shot him in the head.

Following his killing the Israeli army’s spokesperson did not claim it was a mistake, writing “during the violent riots, IDF soldiers fired selectively toward the main instigators.”

After global condemnation, the Israeli army announced that Abu Thuayeh’s killing is now under investigation.

Trump called his Jerusalem decision “a recognition of reality.” Yet he failed to acknowledge the reality of a military occupation that makes it possible for Israel to kill a Palestinian who doesn’t have legs, is blind in one eye, and is trapped behind a fence in the cage of the Gaza Strip, while he was, by all accounts, nonviolently protesting Israel’s continuing theft of Palestinian land.

Trump and most Republicans and Democrats in Congress fail to recognize the reality of Palestinian life in Jerusalem and Israeli violations of international law.

Today, Israel controls all of Jerusalem, and while Israelis there enjoy full citizenship, the vast majority of its Palestinians residents have no political rights and are citizens of nowhere. When I lived in Jerusalem, I met Palestinians dragged out of their homes at gunpoint by Israeli forces to make way for settlers.

By conferring U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, Trump has exposed his “peace plan” as a farce. Prescribing an ever-diminishing Palestinian presence in Jerusalem and ever-intensifying Israeli subjugation of Palestinians is a plan not for peace, but for endless bloodshed.

Just months ago, a more hopeful vision was broadcast in Jerusalem. Tens of thousands of Palestinians — Muslim, Christian and secular East Jerusalemites — took to the streets to pray and non-violently protest Israel’s imposition of a new security arrangement on Palestinians going to pray at Al Aqsa Mosque.

These peaceful protests endured a brutal Israeli crackdown, and ultimately won the day, with Israel reversing its decision to install metal detectors outside the compound.

U.S. citizens, as major funders of Israel’s half-century-old occupation, have a responsibility to support such courageous manifestations of nonviolence.

With taxpayers now asked to fund a fortress-like embassy at Trump’s behest, it is incumbent upon Americans to urge Congress to oppose this funding.

Trump has committed a major foreign policy mistake that legitimizes past and present violence. We must press U.S. policymakers to block Trump’s embassy move, and insist that legitimizing nonviolence should take center stage in U.S. policy toward Israel-Palestine, and in U.S. engagement around the globe.

No: Trump only confirmed the obvious: Jerusalem is Israel’s capital

In foreign policy, conventional wisdom has an almost biblical force. Gospel-like, practitioners intone the commandments: Never get involved in a land war in Asia. Terrorism and religion are unrelated. And, holy of holies, do not appear to prejudge the outcome of peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians.

Clearly, the gospels are not for Donald Trump, who last week declared that Jerusalem is indeed the capital of the State of Israel, and that the United States will move its embassy there from Tel Aviv.

Predictably, the president was denounced by the usual complement of opinion leaders, journalists and political opponents. And since Donald Trump is so often wrong, it is tempting to succumb to the opprobrium of polite society and agree he was probably wrong again. Except he wasn’t.

Starting with the purely factual, Jerusalem has the virtue of actually being the capital of Israel. It is the seat of the Israeli prime minister, its parliament, its Supreme Court and its president.

Notwithstanding the objections of other countries, it is established practice for sovereign nations to choose their own capitals.

Dissenting savants will insist that Jerusalem is disputed territory, and therefore must be off limits to the Jews when it comes to capital-choosing.

But for most polite society — excluding Hamas, Hezbollah and other terrorists — the question of Jerusalem relates to its Old City and Eastern portions.

Not to all of Jerusalem. And Donald Trump made clear that the United States does not intend to place its embassy on disputed land or prejudge the outcome of a successful negotiation between Israel and Palestinian representatives.

Opponents will add that acknowledging Jerusalem as Israel’s capital will enrage the Arab world. Perhaps that’s true — though most Arab states have been surprisingly perfunctory in their condemnations — but it’s not a reason for the United States to avoid acknowledging reality. It should certainly be a factor. But it should not be decisive.

But what about the so-called “Arab street?” And the Palestinians? Yes, they are cross. Hamas and others promptly declared Days of Rage to do what they do on most days that end in “y”: terrorize civilians and destroy property.

Threats of violence are unacceptable, and should not be recognized with sage nods and murmurs about what-we-should-expect. Moving a building is not a pretext for violence, and all who accept the notion that terrorism has a justification are part of the problem.

Finally, there is the peace process. Successive secretaries of state have winded themselves in their breathless pursuit of the Nobel Peace Prize, all to no avail.

But the truth is that the Israelis have had their capital in Jerusalem for almost 70 years, and Washington has maintained an embassy outside Jerusalem for the same time period, and none of that has led to a resolution between the Arabs and the Jews.

There is no reason to believe that acknowledging reality will prejudice that particularly hopeless cause. Perhaps it will have the opposite effect.

Some suggest that behind the Trump administration’s thinking on Jerusalem is the notion that upending the status quo, shaking the parties out of their worn-down shibboleths and going back to the table on the basis of reality could be a path forward.

Maybe. Certainly, the status quo has resulted in little more than dazzling prosperity for Israel and growing misery for Palestinians trapped under an unelected gaggle of octogenarian kleptocrats and more youthful terrorists.

Ultimately, it will be the Israelis and the Palestinians who decide the future for themselves. And it will not be the location of the United States embassy that will shape the fate of the region.

Rather it will be the birth of a partnership between the two sides in the belief that all will be better off at peace.

This story was originally published December 22, 2017 at 9:31 AM with the headline "Pro-Con: Did Trump make a mistake by designating Jerusalem the capital of Israel?."