The days of rage return

And so the days of rage begin again, although for many Palestinians it must sometimes feel that the past decades have been nothing but one long day.

As a journalist who has lived and worked in Jerusalem on and off for many years these explosive outpourings of anger and violence are all too familiar.

On this occasion, however, one can’t help feeling that they could so easily have been avoided had US President Donald Trump not chosen to announce his decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Jerusalem has always held a special place in the hearts and minds of many. It is a city where deep belief and international politics collide to such a degree that it’s all too easy to underestimate the city’s influence, not just on the lives of Palestinians and Israelis, but on the wider region and world as a whole.

“The president has lit a fire and left his Arab allies to deal with the blaze,” was how Elisabeth Marteu, consultant senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies summed up Trump’s decision last week. According to reports in the Washington Post Trump is said to have not fully understood the consequences of his decision.

“It’s insane. We’re all resistant ... he doesn’t realise what all he could trigger by doing this,” one source, called a “confidant” of the president told the newspaper. The same source also confirmed that Trump was more concerned with “seeming pro-Israel” and “making a deal”, and that “the decision wasn’t driven by the peace process ... the decision was driven by his campaign promise”.

If such reports are accurate then it shows the extent to which Trump completely misunderstood the significance of Jerusalem and the volatile political fault lines that surround it.

Any cursory look at ancient or more recent history reveals the extent to which the city occupies the hearts and minds of Palestinians and Israelis alike.

During one of my stints in Jerusalem in December 1987, the same month that the first Palestinian intifada (uprising) broke out, controversial Israel leader Ariel Sharon, who has since died, bought and moved into an apartment in the heart of the Muslim quarter of the Old City. In the months and years that followed some of Sharon’s supporters did likewise.

Strolling down from Damascus Gate, through the melee of Arab stallholders in the Muslin quarter, it would always catch me by surprise to come across the entranceway leading to Sharon’s apartment tucked under a little archway.

Beneath a Star of David flag hanging limply from the building, three or four heavily-armed Israeli soldiers would stand guard in the narrow alleyway, voices crackling over their radios as they eyed those who went past. Sharon liked such gestures. It was his way of saying to the Palestinians, "See, we can go where we want, whenever we want, and what can you do about it? Nothing".

As Housing Minister in 1991 Sharon went even further, taking it upon himself to help Jewish settlers take over a house in Silwan, an Arab village within the Jerusalem municipality. "We have set a goal for ourselves of not leaving one neighbourhood in East Jerusalem without Jews, not one," he declared defiantly.

Far from this situation having eased, these days such land grabs are even more commonplace and coordinated.

Founded in 2000, Ir Amim – “City of Nations” or “City of Peoples” – is a highly-respected Israeli human rights advocacy group whose aim is to render Jerusalem a more equitable and sustainable city for the Israelis and Palestinians who share it.

For some time is has monitored Israeli government support for right-wing organisations aiming to annexe parts of East Jerusalem through settlements and the judaisation of Palestinian neighbourhoods.

Ir Amim says that neighbourhoods in and around the Old City are particularly vulnerable given the political, historic, and symbolic value of the area referred to as the “Holy (or Historic) Basin” by the Israeli Government and settler groups strenuously advancing takeovers.

In its reports it points to unilateral plans and legislation being promoted to rewrite the boundaries of the city and re-weight its demographic balance, some by proposing the excision of large swathes of Palestinian neighbourhoods from Jerusalem.

Part of this process is done through house demolitions of Palestinians living in such areas and, according to Ir Amim, as of October this year the annual total number of demolitions in East Jerusalem was 135 – 86 of which were residential and 49 non-residential structures and by the end of the year this is expected to top last year's record total of 203.

It’s against this controversial backdrop that Trump’s announcement on Jerusalem needs be seen, emboldening as it does Israeli policy makers currently pushing through a raft of bills and proposals aimed at unilaterally and decisively further redrawing Jerusalem’s boundaries and demographics.

These plans, too, says Ir Amim have been transparently declared by some of their promoters as intended to render a two-state solution impossible. It’s all a far cry from Trump’s claims of trying to find the ultimate deal when it comes to peace and sovereignty between Israelis and Palestinians over Jerusalem.

Indeed there are even reports surfacing that Trump’s administration also deliberately blindsided Palestinian leaders over his controversial Jerusalem announcement and designation.

According to David Kenner, Middle East Editor at the respected magazine Foreign Policy, Palestinian diplomats just last week were cautiously optimistic that Trump was on a path that could deliver what the president termed the “ultimate deal” of a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In his account Kenner quotes a senior Palestinian official as saying their optimism was bolstered by a series of interactions with Trump, culminating in a previously unreported meeting on November 30.

At that meeting were Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, Special Representative for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt, and Deputy National Security Advisor Dina Powell, who met with three senior Palestinian intelligence and diplomatic officials.

Taking place as it did just as the first news reports were breaking that Trump would recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the Americans did not inform their Palestinian counterparts of the move. It’s perhaps significant that in the wake of the meeting and announcement, Deputy National Security Advisor Dina Powell, herself announced that she is leaving her post early in the new year. Frustrations with Trump’s handing of the whole affair seems to have resonated within his own political ranks and beyond.

“This whole thing is not about the status of Jerusalem, it is about the status of Washington,” one Palestinian official was quoted in Foreign Policy in response to their delegates being blindsided.

“Washington has been seriously damaged as a mediator and has isolated itself from the global consensus and international law.”

Many Palestinians, not surprisingly, have never been fully convinced of Washington’s role as a neutral broker between them and the Israelis and Trump’s latest move has simply confirmed their suspicions.

So influential is the pro-Israel lobby in the US on the shape of Washington’s foreign policy that at times it’s difficult to tell just who is cracking the whip.

I well recall one Israeli government source once explaining away the extent of the lobby’s leverage with the following observation.

“The Palestinians always complain that we know the details of every proposal from the Americans before they do," he remarked. “There’s good reason for that. We write them.”

Some Palestinians point to the fact that the peace process has been moribund for some time now and certainly before Trump announced his intentions for Jerusalem on his presidential campaign trail in 2016.

Washington’s revised stance on Jerusalem will only expedite the inevitable collapse of the peace process and the longer-term impact of this should not be underestimated. Many analysts decry what they see as a missed opportunity by Washington to breathe some new life into it.

“In nearly 30 years of covering United States foreign policy I’ve never seen a president give up so much to so many for so little,” wrote veteran Middle East reporter and commentator Thomas Friedman in the New York Times last week.

“Today, Trump just gave it away – for free. Such a deal! Why in the world would you just give this away for free and not even use it as a lever to advance the prospect of an Israeli-Palestinian deal?" an angry Friedman asked.

While Trump failed to gain anything towards the peace process, the effects of his decision will doubtless be felt far beyond the walls and immediate neighbourhoods of Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.

Long after the days of rage subside and the tear gas clears American diplomats will find themselves hamstrung, entering negotiations on a full range of issues having to first somehow address the action taken by Trump.

Then there is the equally troubling question of how it might undermine global counter-terrorism efforts. Right now in Bahrain the annual International Institute for Strategic Studies, Manama Dialogue security conference is fully underway. One of this year’s key themes, How to respond to extremism? could almost have been written in anticipation of Trump’s Jerusalem bombshell.

Already there is almost universal concern among the global delegates attending the conference that Trump’s announcement will be music to the ears of jihadists like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group.

Analysts worry on two counts. First that people who might not be well disposed towards the west but were not planning to translate this into violent action may now think again.

“There are dormant jihadist mentalities who are sitting there thinking ‘I'm not operational but I have jihadist feelings’ so will this push them over the fence?” observed Hediya Fathalla, an expert on Gulf security, airing the concerns of many.

The second worry is that those who have in the past co-operated with US intelligence and security agencies may also think again. Will, for example, officials in, say, the Saudi or Jordanian intelligence services remain as convinced as before that the US has their interests at heart?

Back on Jerusalem’s streets, and in those other towns and cities like Ramallah, Bethlehem and Gaza, the days of rage have been reawakened and the talk in some Palestinian circles is of a third intifada like those previously in 1987 and 2000. For Palestinians and Israelis alike the years of those two bloody episodes cost them dear.

Angry as the Palestinians are, it’s hard to see how they could sustain such an uprising today in the face of an Israeli military and security apparatus that over the years has massively tightened its grip. This, however, will not necessarily prevent Palestinians from trying. On the huge concrete wall built by the Israelis to separate the two communities it’s not uncommon to see a slogan painted by Palestinian activists that reads: “To exist is to resist".

The days of rage are back again for now and already people are dying. Few would disagree that their blood is on Donald Trump’s hands.