Opinion: Palestinian Says “Do Not Move U.S. Embassy”

Newly inaugurated U.S. President Donald Trump promised to move the American embassy from “Tel Aviv” to Jerusalem, hardly acknowledging the historical course of the already volatile region and unleashing an episode of chaos.

Unsympathetic to Palestinian pleas and international warnings, this thoughtless decision would overturn 70 years of international consensus and recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Remolding biblical mythology to fit political motives, Israeli forced occupied Palestine in 1948 to create Israel and declare the Palestinian capital, Jerusalem, as their own capital. This event disturbed the cultural and political equilibrium that existed in Palestine and initiated a war that has proven the longest and one of the most bloody and destabilizing in modern human history.

Despite the continual rejection and condemnation of the Israeli occupation by the international community, with a repeated emphasis on Jerusalem, Israeli leaders continue to urge other countries to recognize the Palestinian city as Israel’s capital.

Countries around the world, even those that are considered strong allies of Israel, including the United States, reject Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem, and refuse Israeli invitations to relocate their embassies from Tel Aviv to the illegally occupied city.

Throughout his campaign for the White House, Trump made numerous, often contradictory promises. While he initially pledged to keep a similar distance between Palestinians and Israel, he later reversed his position, adopting that of Israel’s right-wing government in which new bills are being passed to annex even the Jewish settlements rendered illegal by Israel’s own definitions, and to remove any restriction on new settlement construction and expansion.

While the mainstream media is already portraying Palestinians as terrorists and predicting “a fresh wave of Palestinian violence” should the embassy be relocated, I, as a Palestinian refugee enduring the consequences of this illegal occupation daily, urge everyone to learn more as the new President invites more violence and pushes to break international laws.

The significance of Jerusalem to Palestinian Muslims and Christians, and hundreds of millions of believers around the world, is easily dismissed with horrific and irreversible outcomes.