Tramp's Decision on Jerusalem Revealed a Number of Changes in the Region

• 02.09.2018, 19:43
•  Near East,  World

РИА Новости / Виталий Белоусов

Talks between Palestine and Israel can be resumed only when the future Palestinian state will include the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with its capital in East Jerusalem, and all the "territories seized by Israel in the 1967 war", Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said this, noting that the United States cannot impose a peace agreement on the Palestinians.

It should be noted that after Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, the Palestinian authorities have activated their work for the recognition of the Palestinian state by European countries, trying in such a way to oppose Trump's decision. Still within the framework of this process, no European country has recognized Palestine; instead, there have been assertions (for example, by Germany, Great Britain) that they are not going to follow the example of the United States.

At the same time, Israel is actively working to expand the number of countries recognizing Jerusalem as its capital. Israel has already achieved relatively greater success in this direction; Guatemala has already announced the transfer of its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and the Israeli authorities are currently negotiating with more than 10 countries on the issue.

As a result of these processes, a new situation can be created in the Israeli-Palestinian negotiation process, which can either further alienate the sides from each other, or contribute to the removal of the negotiation process from deadlock. In this regard, the recent statement by Abdelhafiz Nofal, the Ambassador of Palestine to Russia, that Palestine is looking for new mechanisms for resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, including the US involvement.

Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel has clearly demonstrated that Palestine no longer needs resources to impose something on Israel through intifada, and that any change in the conflict settlement is possible due to a political decision.

Meanwhile, Trump's decision once again demonstrated the lack of unity in the Arab world. Reactions to Trump's decision on Jerusalem once again proved that now the conflict concerns only to Palestine, not to the entire Arab world: the latter will no longer, to the detriment of its national interests, protect the rights of the Palestinians. Instead, the role of the Palestinian's rights defender has been taken by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, thus once again declaring his ambitions to be the leader of the Islamic world.

Thus, two months after Trump's decision on Jerusalem, one thing is clear: despite the predictions, the unprecedented increase of tension hasn't been recorded in the Middle East due to this decision. At the same time, Trump's decision in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict created a new situation that forced the parties to take active steps.