Ln December 6, 2017, Donald Trump delivered his first blow to the implementation of international law in the Middle East. He recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, a decision that all his predecessors had refused to support because of the disputed nature of the Holy City, of which only the western part has been integrated into Israel since 1949, the eastern part has not been occupied. only in 1967.
It was while waiting for a final solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that the United States, in agreement with the other members of the UN, had until then maintained its embassy in Israel in Tel Aviv. Bill Clinton had even proposed in 2000, within the framework of “two-state solution”that Jerusalem be a capital shared between Israel and the future Palestinian state, with Israeli sovereignty over the Jewish neighborhoods and Palestinian sovereignty over the Arab neighborhoods (the 300,000 Palestinians remain a 60% majority in the occupied territory of East Jerusalem).
A domestic political decision
Trump brushes aside such considerations to stick to the sole freedom of worship, according to him perfectly guaranteed by Israel in Jerusalem. To deny the Palestinian people national attachment to the Holy City, as well as the daily violence of the occupation in East Jerusalem, Trump continues his business of dismantling international legality by extricating the United States from the Iran nuclear deal. by recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Syrian territory of the Golan, occupied since 1967. The Republican president thus intends to satisfy the evangelical right, which supports him unconditionally in the name of a “Christian Zionism”.
In addition to his daughter and son-in-law, he is represented in Jerusalem on May 14, 2018 during the official inauguration of the new US embassy by two priests whose anti-Semitic excesses did not disqualify him in the eyes of Benyamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister since 2009. This is because the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, paradoxically, is much more important to ” Christian Zionists of the hard right in the US than for American Jews, who consistently continue to vote overwhelmingly Democratic.
Netanyahu’s bet on Christian fundamentalists goes far beyond the United States, with on the evening of May 14, 2018, in Jerusalem, a coordination meeting between the Israeli prime minister and evangelical leaders from Latin America, where their messianism Zionist is driven by militant proselytism. It is in this context that the White House can be pleased to see its gesture in Jerusalem soon followed by Guatemala, Honduras and Paraguay. But the actual move of the Paraguayan embassy to Jerusalem is so linked to the personality of President Horacio Carte that it only lasts a few months. The new Paraguayan head of state, Mario Abdo Benitez, although a member of the same party as Cartes, decided in September 2018 to send his embassy back to Tel Aviv to ” to contribute “at” a broad, just and lasting peace in the Middle East “. Netanyahu, enraged by this setback, had to settle for the commitment, this time followed by effect, from the president of Guatemala, Jimmy Morales, who was closely linked to the evangelical right.
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