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Israel changes law to make it harder to cede Jerusalem control

An Israeli flag is seen near the Dome of the Rock, located in Jerusalem's Old City on the compound known to Muslims as Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as Temple Mount December 6, 2017.

By Maayan Lubell

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel’s parliament passed an amendment on Tuesday that would make it harder for it to cede control over parts of Jerusalem in any peace deal with the Palestinians, who condemned the move as undermining any chance to revive talks on statehood.

The legislation, sponsored by the far-right Jewish Home coalition party, raises to 80 from 61 the number of votes required in the 120-seat Knesset to approve any proposal to hand over part of the city to “a foreign party”.

Last month U.S. President Donald Trump angered the Palestinians, Middle East leaders and world powers by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

As home to major Muslim, Jewish and Christian holy sites, Jerusalem’s status is one of the most sensitive issues in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Trump’s Dec. 6 decision sparked regional protests and prompted the Palestinians to rule out Washington as a peace broker in any future talks.

Nabil Abu Rdainah, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, described Trump’s policy shift on Jerusalem and the passage of the amendment as “a declaration of war against the Palestinian people”.

“The vote clearly shows that the Israeli side has officially declared an end to the so-called political process,” Abu Rdainah said, referring to U.S.-sponsored talks on Palestinian statehood that collapsed in 2014.

Israel captured East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed it in a move not recognized internationally. It says the entire city is its “eternal and indivisible” capital.

Palestinians seek to make East Jerusalem the capital of a state they seek to establish in the occupied West Bank and in the Gaza Strip.

The amendment, long in the legislative pipeline, was passed with 64 lawmakers voting in favor and 52 against.

Opposition head Isaac Herzog said Jewish Home was leading Israel “toward a terrible disaster”. Jewish Home’s leader, Naftali Bennett, said the vote showed that Israel would keep control of all of Jerusalem forever.

“There will be no more political skulduggery that will allow our capital to be torn apart,” Bennett said on Twitter.

A bid to revive Israeli-Palestinian negotiations led by the president’s adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has so far shown no progress.

On Sunday, Netanyahu’s Likud party unanimously urged legislators in a non-binding resolution to effectively annex Israeli settlements built in the West Bank.

Political commentators said Likud’s decision might bolster right-wing support for Netanyahu, who could seek a public mandate in an early election while he awaits possible criminal indictments against him on corruption suspicions. He denies wrongdoing.

Parliamentary elections are not due until November 2019 but the police investigations in two cases of alleged corruption against Netanyahu and tensions among coalition partners in his government could hasten a poll.

Some commentators, pointing to an existing law that already sets a similar high threshold for handing over territory in a land-for-peace deal, have said Jewish Home was essentially competing with Likud for support among the right-wing base.

(This version of the story refiles to remove extraneous word in paragraph 14.)

(Reporting by Maayan Lubell, additional reporting by Ali Sawafta in Ramallah; Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Raissa Kasolowsky)

Thousands of Palestinians take part in anti-Trump protests

A demonstrator holds a sign and a Palestinian flag during clashes with Israeli troops at a protest against U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, near the West Bank city of Nablus, December 29, 2017.

GAZA (Reuters) – Thousands of Palestinians took to the streets of Gaza and the occupied West Bank for the fourth Friday in a row in protests against U.S. President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Palestinian health officials said at least 20 protesters were wounded by live fire, mostly along the Gaza border. An Israeli military spokeswoman said soldiers had shot at “main instigators” who posed a direct threat to the troops and who were trying to damage the border security fence.

The spokeswoman said about 4,000 Palestinians across the West Bank and Gaza, some throwing rocks and fire bombs and setting tires alight, confronted Israeli soldiers who responded mainly by firing tear gas.

A Palestinian demonstrator hurls stones towards Israeli troops during clashes at a protest against U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, near the West Bank city of Nablus, December 29, 2017. REUTERS/Mohamad Torokman

In Gaza, demonstrators chanted “Death to America, death to Israel, and death to Trump” and militants fired rockets into Israel, drawing strikes by Israeli tanks and aircraft.

The military said it targeted posts that belonged to Hamas, the Islamist group that controls the Palestinian enclave, after intercepting two of the three rockets fired into Israel. Police said the third struck a building, causing damage. No casualties were reported in those incidents.

Trump outraged Palestinians and sparked anger in the Middle East and among world powers with his Jerusalem declaration on Dec. 6, which reversed decades of U.S. policy on one of the most sensitive issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Israel considers Jerusalem its eternal and indivisible capital. Palestinians want the capital of an independent Palestinian state to be in the city’s eastern sector, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East War and annexed in a move never recognized internationally.

A masked Palestinian demonstrator uses a slingshot to hurl stones towards Israeli troops during clashes at a protest against U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, near the West Bank city of Nablus, December 29, 2017. REUTERS/Mohamad Torokman

Most countries regard the status of Jerusalem as a matter to be settled in an eventual Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, although that process is now stalled.

A U.N. General Assembly resolution passed on Dec. 21 rejected Trump’s Jerusalem declaration. A total of 128 countries voted for the U.N. resolution. Nine opposed it and 35 abstained. Twenty-one countries did not cast a vote.

(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi and Maayan Lubell; Editing by Catherine Evans)

Opposition groups quit Iraqi Kurdish government

People are seen outside the Directorate of province building after it was set on fire by Kurdish protesters in Pera magroon district in Sulaimaniyah, Iraq December 19,

SULAIMANIYA, Iraq (Reuters) – Leading Kurdish opposition movement Gorran has withdrawn its ministers from Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and its member Yousif Mohamed has resigned as parliament speaker, party sources told Reuters on Wednesday.

The Kurdistan Islamic Group (Komal), another opposition party with a smaller presence in parliament, also withdrew from the government.

The departures follow two days of violent unrest in the region, as Kurdish demonstrators joined protests against years of austerity and unpaid public sector salaries, amid tensions between their region and Baghdad.

Some protesters have demanded the regional government’s ousting.

Tension has been high in the region since the central government in Baghdad imposed tough measures when the KRG unilaterally held an independence referendum on Sept. 25 and Kurds voted overwhelmingly to secede.

The move, in defiance of Baghdad, also alarmed neighboring Turkey and Iran who have their own Kurdish minorities.

At least three people were killed and more than 80 wounded on Tuesday. They were killed in clashes with Kurdish security forces, local officials said, and some were injured when the crowd was shot at with rubber bullets and sprayed with tear gas.

Protesters also attacked several offices of the main political parties in Sulaimaniya province on Monday and Tuesday.

CURFEWS IMPOSED

There were no major protests in the city on Wednesday.

Security forces from the region’s capital Erbil have been deployed to help quell the unrest in the city, security sources told Reuters.

After Tuesday’s unrest, curfews were imposed in several towns across the province, some have lasted through Wednesday.

Local media reported smaller protests in towns across the province, including Ranya and Kifri.

In a statement on Tuesday, Kurdish Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani, who is on an official visit to Germany, told protesters that although he understood their frustrations, the burning of political party offices is “not helpful”.

The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) said on Wednesday it was “deeply concerned” about violence and clashes during the protests, and called for restraint on all sides.

“The people have the right to partake in peaceful demonstrations, and the authorities have the responsibility of protecting their citizens, including peaceful protesters,” UNAMI said in a statement.

UNAMI also called on the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to respect media freedoms after Kurdish Asayish security forces on Tuesday raided the offices of Kurdish private broadcast NRT in Sulaimaniya, and took the channel off the air.

NRT’s founder and opposition figure Shaswar Abdulwahid was also arrested at the Sulaimaniya airport on Tuesday. His family have asked for his release, amid reports that another NRT journalist was arrested in Sulaimaniya on Wednesday.

(Additional reporting and writing by Raya Jalabi in Erbil and Ahmed Aboulenein in Baghdad; Editing by William Maclean)

Indonesia labels calls for U.S. boycott over Jerusalem move ‘misguided’

By Agustinus Beo Da Costa

JAKARTA (Reuters) – Indonesia’s vice president said on Tuesday that calls for a boycott of U.S. goods over President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel were misguided – not least because of the country’s reliance on U.S. technology.

There have been a series of protests in the world’s biggest Muslim-majority country since Trump’s controversial move this month to reverse decades of U.S. policy.

At a rally of about 80,000 people on Sunday, the Indonesian Ulema Council, a body of Muslim clerics, called for a boycott of U.S. and Israeli products if Trump did not revoke his action.

Vice President Jusuf Kalla told reporters that Indonesia was trying to put pressure on Washington through the United Nations and it was not even practical to stop using American products.

“Do not be emotional… do we dare to boycott iPhones, stop using Google. Can (you) live without them?” he asked.

“(You) cannot live without them now. If you go out of the house now, you put (an iPhone) in your pocket,” he said.

Kalla said that even if people stopped watching U.S. movies, other American goods such as specialized petroleum equipment were vital in oil-producing Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s biggest economy.

There have been a series of protests in Indonesia over the issue of Jerusalem, including some where hardliners burned U.S. and Israeli flags.

The status of Jerusalem, a city holy to Jews, Muslims and Christians, is one of the biggest barriers to a lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Asked about how to proceed after Washington vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for the U.S. declaration on Jerusalem to be withdrawn, Kalla said that dialogue was the only solution.

“There had been three wars, and Palestine’s territory has become smaller, so there must be a dialogue, peace,” he said.

Indonesia enjoys a trade surplus with the United States and is one of 16 countries that the Trump administration has said could be investigated for possible trade abuses.

Tutum Rahanta, deputy chairman of the Indonesian Retailers Association, said it was up to consumers whether to buy American products.

“If it is advice or a call to boycott, it depends on the consumers whether to use the products or not.”

(Additonal reporting by Cindy Silviana; Writing by Ed Davies; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Senior Honduran official rejects new election call amid protests

By Gustavo Palencia

TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) – A senior Honduran government official ruled out a new presidential election on Monday, the day after the Organization of American States called for one following a contentious vote that has sparked violent protests.

Electoral authorities said on Sunday that U.S.-friendly President Juan Orlando Hernandez won the Nov. 26 election after partial recounts of voting tallies did not tip results in favor of his opponent, TV host Salvador Nasralla, despite widespread allegations of irregularities.

Hours later, however, the OAS said the process did not meet democratic standards.

First Vice President Ricardo Alvarez flatly rejected the call for another vote. “The only other elections there are going to be in this country will be on the last Sunday of November 2021,” he said.

“This is an autonomous and sovereign nation,” Alvarez told reporters. “This is a nation that is not going to do what anybody from an international organization tells it to do.”

Hernandez, who is mourning the death of his sister in a helicopter crash over the weekend, has not yet commented on the call for new elections.

Nasralla leads a center-left coalition that seemed headed for a surprise upset in the hours after the election, but results suddenly stopped coming in. When they restarted, the outcome began to favor the incumbent.

Opposition politicians hurled accusations of voter fraud at the government, and Honduran military police fired tear gas at protesters, who burned tires and attacked buildings.

Adding to the confusion, European Union election observers on Sunday said the vote recount showed no irregularities. Like the OAS, the EU observers monitored the electoral process in Honduras.

EU chief monitor Marisa Matias said on Monday it was beyond her team’s mandate to say whether there should be a new election, saying that up to two months would be needed to finish a final report.

NASRALLA SAYS HE WILL WIN AGAIN

Nasralla met with OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro and a senior State Department official in Washington on Monday. Nasralla said he was ready for new elections, even though he claimed to have won the first time by half a million votes.

“I’m sure I will win again,” Nasralla said, after handing more material purportedly showing fraud to Almagro.

John Creamer, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, told Nasralla the State Department was studying both the OAS and EU reports and did not speak in favor of or against new elections, Tony Garcia, an adviser to the candidate present in the meeting, told Reuters.

The U.S. State Department issued a statement urging Honduran political parties to raise any concerns about the election using what it said was a legal provision establishing a five-day period for presenting challenges to the results.

“We call for all Hondurans to refrain from violence,” it said.

Honduran rights groups say 20 people have been killed in the protests, almost all by bullet wounds.

Furious that Hernandez had been declared the winner, protesters clashed with police in Tegucigalpa, the capital, blocked roads around the main port and partially burned a courthouse and bank branch in San Pedro Sula, Honduras’ second-largest city.

Honduras has been roiled by political instability and violent protests since the election. The count has been questioned by the two main opposition parties, including Nasralla’s Opposition Alliance Against the Dictatorship, as well as a wide swath of the diplomatic corps.

The OAS statement described irregularities, including deliberate human intrusions in the electoral computer system, pouches of votes opened or lacking votes, and “extreme” improbability around voting patterns it analyzed, making it “impossible to determine with the necessary certainty the winner.”

(Reporting by Gustavo Palencia in Tegucigalpa, Anthony Esposito, Lizbeth Diaz and Gabriel Stargardter in Mexico City, and Mohammad Zargham in Washington; Writing by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Matthew Lewis and Leslie Adler)

Palestinian leader says Trump’s Jerusalem ‘crime’ prevents U.S. peace role

By Ali Kucukgocmen

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told Muslim leaders on Wednesday that a U.S. decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital was a crime which showed that Washington should no longer play a role in Middle East peace talks.

Addressing an emergency meeting of Muslim leaders in Turkey, Abbas said President Donald Trump was giving Jerusalem away as if it were an American city.

“Jerusalem is and always will be the capital of Palestine,” he said, adding Trump’s decision was “the greatest crime” and a violation of international law.

Wednesday’s summit was hosted by Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan who has bitterly criticized the United States, a NATO ally, for its stance on Jerusalem.

“I invite all countries supporting international law to recognise Jerusalem as the occupied capital of Palestine. We cannot be late any more,” Erdogan told leaders and ministers from more than 50 Muslim countries.

He described Trump’s decision last week as a reward for Israeli actions including occupation, settlement construction, land seizure and “disproportionate violence and murder”.

“Israel is an occupying state (and) Israel is a terror state,” he said.

Jerusalem, revered by Jews, Christians and Muslims alike, is home to Islam’s third holiest site and has been at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for decades. Israel captured Arab East Jerusalem in 1967 and later annexed it in an action not recognised internationally.

Ahead of the meeting, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Muslim nations should urge the world to recognise East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state within its pre-1967 borders.

He said this week Turkey was not seeking sanctions in response to the U.S. move, but wanted the summit to issue a strong rejection of the U.S. decision.

U.S. ‘BIAS’

The Trump administration says it remains committed to reaching peace between Israel and the Palestinians and its decision does not affect Jerusalem’s future borders or status.

It says any credible future peace deal will place the Israeli capital in Jerusalem, and ditching old policies is needed to revive a peace process frozen since 2014.

Abbas told the leaders in Istanbul that Washington could no longer be an honest broker.

“It will be unacceptable for it to have a role in the political process any longer since it is biased in favour of Israel,” he said. “This is our position and we hope you support us in this.”

Trump’s declaration has been applauded by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said Washington had an irreplaceable part to play in the region.

“There is no substitute to the role that the United States plays in leading the peace process,” he said at a Hanukkah holiday candle lighting ceremony on Tuesday.

King Abdullah of Jordan, which signed a peace treaty with Israel more than 20 years ago, told the Istanbul summit that he rejected any attempt to change the status quo of Jerusalem and its holy sites.

Abdullah’s Hashemite dynasty is custodian of Jerusalem’s Muslim sites, making Amman sensitive to any changes in the city.

Iran, locked in a regional rivalry with Saudi Arabia, said the Muslim world should overcome internal problems through dialogue so it could unite against Israel.

Tehran has repeatedly called for the destruction of the Israeli state and backs several militant groups in their fight against it.

“America is only seeking to secure the maximum interests of the Zionists and it has no respect for the legitimate rights of Palestinians,” President Hassan Rouhani told the summit.

(Additional reporting by Daren Butler and Parisa Hafezi in Istanbul, John Davison and Nadine Awadalla in Cairo and Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem; Writing by Dominic Evans; Editing by Catherine Evans, William Maclean)

‘We are one’: Palestinian Christians and Muslims unite against Trump’s Jerusalem call

By Maayan Lubell

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Less than an hour after U.S. President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, Palestinians protested by turning off the lights on the Christmas tree outside Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity, the traditional birthplace of Jesus.

It was a timely reminder that while headlines focused on Islamist calls for uprisings and Trump’s references to Jewish historical ties, the president’s words also stirred deep feelings among the Palestinians’ small Christian community.

Coming out of the Sunday service in his Assyrian Catholic church in Jerusalem, Fredrick Hazo accused Trump of “dragging all the world into trouble”, and called on the U.S. leader to reverse his decision.

“We are united – Christians, Muslims, we are one,” said the 59-year-old Palestinian musician, standing in an alley in the heart of the Old City, surrounded by shops selling religious trinkets.

He was frustrated by the politics, but confident the delicate balance the three faiths kept in the holy city would prevail. “In this sacred place, God is protecting us all. We are guarded by his angels in Jerusalem,” Hazo added.

Christians make up around just one percent of the Palestinian population in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem – though they punch above their weight in local and national politics.

Back in July, Hazo protested alongside Muslims against Israel’s installation of security scanners at the nearby al-Aqsa mosque – Islam’s third holiest site – after two Arab-Israeli gunmen shot dead two Israeli police officers at the site.

It removed the metal detectors after days of bloody clashes, scenes that have not been repeated in the city since Trump’s declaration.

UNITED IN PRAYER

The appeals to religious unity inside Jerusalem’s walls stand in contrast to the more divided voices outside.

In the hours running up to Trump’s statement, Pope Francis called for the status quo in the city to be respected. The Episcopal Church of the United States said Trump’s announcement “could have profound ramifications on the peace process and the future of a two-state solution”.

But Trump’s decision found strong backing from another corner of the Christian community – many among his own country’s politically powerful evangelicals who see God’s hand in the modern-day return of Jews to a biblical homeland.

Trump convened a circle of evangelical advisers during his presidential bid, and he was the overwhelming favorite of white evangelical voters in last year’s U.S. election.

“We are all bible-believers and we believe that this is the bible-land and that Jerusalem is the ancient capital of Israel back to the days of King David,” said Dallas-based Mike Evans, part of an evangelical group that met Trump on Monday.

“So for our president to stand up and declare it makes us extremely proud and honored.”

For Palestinian supermarket cashier Mohammed al-Hawa, however, Trump’s words and the logic behind them ignored the more complex reality on the ground.

People of all faith in Jerusalem were united in prayer, the 33-year-old said, even if they were divided over politics.

“Christians, Jews and Muslims live in this city together. There is no problem between them. Only the politics. The governments want to make wars,” he said.

“This is my city – my blood, my life,” added a 70-year-old Palestinian, walking through the pilgrim-packed courtyard of Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre, revered by Christians as the site of Jesus’s tomb.

The church is packed into a small parcel of land that also holds the al-Aqsa compound and Judaism’s Western Wall

“I can go to the church, to anywhere in Jerusalem, not Trump nor Netanyahu can stop me,” added the man who identified himself only as a “Jerusalemite”.

(Additional reporting by Mustafa Abu Ganeyeh in Bethelem; Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Andrew Heavens)

Turkey chides Arabs for ‘weak’ reaction ahead of Jerusalem summit

By Tuvan Gumrukcu and Parisa Hafezi

ANKARA/ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkey criticized what it said was a feeble Arab reaction to the U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, saying on the eve of Wednesday’s Muslim summit in Istanbul that some Arab countries were scared of angering Washington.

President Tayyip Erdogan, who has accused the United States of ignoring Palestinian claims to Israeli-occupied east Jerusalem and “trampling on international law”, has invited leaders from more than 50 Muslim countries to agree a response.

Jerusalem, revered by Jews, Christians and Muslims alike, is home to Islam’s third holiest site and has been at the heart of Israeli-Palestinian conflict for decades.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement last week recognizing the city as Israel’s capital angered many Muslim countries, but few governments have matched Turkey’s warning that it would plunge the world “into a fire with no end”.

Several countries had still not said who they would send to Istanbul, a Turkish minister said.

“Some Arab countries have shown very weak responses (on Jerusalem),” Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said. “It seems some countries are very timid of the United States.”

He said Egypt and the United Arab Emirates would send foreign ministers while Saudi Arabia had yet to say how it would participate. All three countries have delicate ties with Turkey, seeing links between the policies of Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted ruling AK Party and regional Islamist movements they oppose.

Other countries had also not said who they would send, Cavusoglu said, adding that the meeting of Organisation of Islamic Cooperation countries must stand up to what he called Washington’s “I am a super power, I can do anything” mentality.

“We will make a call for countries that have so far not recognized Palestine to do so now,” he said. “…We want the United States to turn back from its mistake.”

PROTESTS AND CLASHES

Trump’s announcement triggered days of protests across the Muslim world and clashes between Palestinians and Israeli security forces in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.

Israel captured Arab East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war and later annexed it, an action not recognized internationally.

On Monday, tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in Beirut to protest at a march backed by Hezbollah, the heavily armed Iran-backed Shi’ite group whose leader called last week for a new Palestinian uprising against Israel.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who is expected to attend the Istanbul summit, said his country supported a new uprising against Israel to “safeguard the Palestinian people’s rights”.

Rouhani said Muslim countries would “undoubtedly voice their protest to the world” at Wednesday’s meeting.

Iran supports several anti-Israel militant groups. The mainly Shi’ite country is also competing for power and influence in the Middle East with predominantly Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia, a close U.S. ally.

Iranian Defence Minister Amir Hatami said Trump’s decision would strengthen Israel, and accused some Muslim states of cooperating covertly with the Israeli government.

“We strongly believe that this decision is the result of interaction between Israel and some Muslim countries,” he told his Turkish counterpart in a telephone call on Tuesday, Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency reported.

Qassem Soleimani, head of the branch of the Revolutionary Guards that oversees operations outside Iran, pledged “complete support for Palestinian Islamic resistance movements” on Monday.

The Trump administration says it remains committed to reaching peace between Israel and the Palestinians and its decision does not affect Jerusalem’s future borders or status.

It says any credible future peace deal will place the Israeli capital in Jerusalem, and ditching old policies is needed to revive a peace process frozen since 2014.

(Writing by Dominic Evans; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

Two dead in ‘Day of Rage’ over Jerusalem, Palestinian president defiant

By Ali Sawafta and Nidal al-Mughrabi

JERUSALEM/GAZA (Reuters) – At least two people were killed in clashes with Israeli troops on Friday when thousands of Palestinians demonstrated against U.S. President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and the Palestinian president said Washington could no longer be a peace broker.

Across the Arab and Muslim worlds, thousands more protesters took to the streets on the Muslim holy day to express solidarity with the Palestinians and outrage at Trump’s reversal of decades of U.S. policy.

Israeli soldiers shot dead a Palestinian man near the Gaza border, the first confirmed death in two days of unrest. Scores of people were wounded on the “Day of Rage”. A second person later died of their wounds, a Gaza hospital official said.

The Israeli army said hundreds of Palestinians were rolling burning tyres and throwing rocks at soldiers across the border.

“During the riots IDF soldiers fired selectively towards two main instigators and hits were confirmed,” it said.

More than 80 Palestinians were wounded in the occupied West Bank and Gaza by Israeli live fire and rubber bullets, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance service. Dozens more suffered from tear gas inhalation. Thirty-one were wounded on Thursday.

As Friday prayers ended at the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, worshippers made their way toward the walled Old City gates, chanting “Jerusalem is ours, Jerusalem is our capital” and “We don’t need empty words, we need stones and Kalashnikovs”. Scuffles broke out between protesters and police.

In Hebron, Bethlehem and Nablus, dozens of Palestinians threw stones at Israeli soldiers who fired back with tear gas.

In Gaza, controlled by the Islamist group Hamas, calls for worshippers to protest sounded over mosque loudspeakers. Hamas has called for a new Palestinian uprising like the “intifadas” of 1987-1993 and 2000-2005, which together saw thousands of Palestinians and more than 1,000 Israelis killed.

“Whoever moves his embassy to occupied Jerusalem will become an enemy of the Palestinians and a target of Palestinian factions,” said Hamas leader Fathy Hammad as protesters in Gaza burned posters of Trump.

“We declare an intifada until the liberation of Jerusalem and all of Palestine.”

Protests largely died down as night fell. Rocket sirens sounded in southern Israeli towns near the Gaza border, and the Israeli military said it had intercepted one of at least two projectiles fired from Gaza. No casualties were reported.

Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, a militant group linked to Abbas’s Fatah party, claimed responsibility for firing one of the rockets, and said it was in protest against Trump’s decision.

The military said another rocket hit the Israeli town of Sderot. No casualties were reported.

Israel’s military said that in response to the rocket fire, its aircraft bombed militant targets in Gaza and the Palestinian Health Ministry said at least 25 people were wounded in the strikes, including six children.

The Israeli military said it had carried out the strikes on a militant training camp and on a weapons depot. Witnesses said most of the wounded were residents of a building near the camp.

At the United Nations, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said Washington still had credibility as a mediator.

“The United States has credibility with both sides. Israel will never be, and should never be, bullied into an agreement by the United Nations, or by any collection of countries that have proven their disregard for Israel’s security,” Haley told the U.N. Security Council.

But Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas appeared defiant.

“We reject the American decision over Jerusalem. With this position the United States has become no longer qualified to sponsor the peace process,” Abbas said in a statement. He did not elaborate further.

France, Italy, Germany, Britain and Sweden called on the United States to “bring forward detailed proposals for an Israeli-Palestinian settlement”.

“PROMISE FULFILLED”

Trump’s announcement on Wednesday has infuriated the Arab world and upset Western allies. The status of Jerusalem has been one of the biggest obstacles to a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians for generations.

Israel considers all of Jerusalem to be its capital. Palestinians want the eastern part of the city as the capital of a future independent state of their own.

Most countries consider East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed after capturing it in the 1967 Middle East War, to be occupied territory. It includes the Old City, home to sites considered holy to Muslims, Jews and Christians alike.

For decades, Washington, like most of the rest of the international community, held back from recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, saying its status should be determined as part of the Palestinian-Israeli peace process. No other country has an embassy there.

The Trump administration argues that the peace process has become moribund, and outdated policies need to be jettisoned for the sides in the conflict to make progress.

Trump has also noted that Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton all promised as candidates to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. “I fulfilled my campaign promise – others didn’t!” Trump tweeted on Friday with a video montage of campaign speeches on the issue by his three predecessors.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Friday it would still be up to the Israelis and Palestinians to hammer out all other issues surrounding the city in future talks.

“With respect to the rest of Jerusalem, the president … did not indicate any final status for Jerusalem. He was very clear that the final status, including the borders, would be left to the two parties to negotiate and decide.”

Still, some Muslim countries view the Trump administration’s motives with particular suspicion. As a candidate he proposed banning all Muslims from entering the United States, and in office he has tried to block entry by citizens of several Muslim-majority states.

“DEATH TO THE DEVIL”

In Ramallah, the seat of Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, the leader’s religious affairs adviser said Trump’s stance was an affront to Islam and Christianity alike.

“America has chosen to elect a president who has put it in enmity with all Muslims and Christians,” said Mahmoud al-Habbash.

In Iran, which has never recognized Israel and supports anti-Israel militants, demonstrators burned pictures of Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu while chanting “Death to the Devil”.

In Cairo, capital of Egypt, a U.S. ally which has a peace treaty with Israel, hundreds of protesters who had gathered in Al-Azhar mosque and outside in its courtyard chanted “Jerusalem is Arab! O Trump, you madman, the Arab people are everywhere!”

Al Azhar’s Imam, Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, rejected an invitation to meet U.S. Vice President Mike Pence.

Large demonstrations also took place in Jordan, Tunisia, Somalia, Yemen, Malaysia and Indonesia, and hundreds protested outside the U.S. embassy in Berlin.

France said the United States had sidelined itself in the Middle East. “The reality is they are alone and isolated on this issue,” Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said.

(Additional reporting by Ammar Awad, Omar Fahmy and Maayan Lubell, John Irish in Paris and Michelle Nichols at the United Nations; Editing by Yara Bayoumy and James Dalgleish)

Iranians rally against Trump’s Jerusalem move, burn U.S. flags: TV

ANKARA (Reuters) – Hundreds of Iranians took part in rallies across the country on Friday to condemn U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision this week to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, state TV reported.

Leaders of Iran, where opposition to Israel and support for the Palestinian cause has been central to foreign policy since the 1979 Islamic revolution, have denounced Trump’s move, including his plan to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.

State TV aired footage of marchers chanting “Death to America” and “Death to Israel”, holding up Palestinian flags and banners saying: “Quds belongs to Muslims”, using the Arabic name for the city. In several cities protesters burned effigies of Trump, Iranian media reported.

Iran regards Palestine as comprising all of the holy land, including the Jewish state, which it does not recognize. It has repeatedly called for the destruction of Israel and backs several Islamic militant groups in their fight against Israel.

Describing the United States and Israel as oppressors, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday that Trump’s decision was a sign of incompetence and failure.

Opposition to Trump’s move has united Iran’s hardline and pragmatist factions, with both pragmatist President Hassan Rouhani and commanders of the hardline Revolutionary Guards urging Iranians to join nationwide “Day of Rage” rallies.

Some protesters burned pictures of Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu while chanting “Death to the Devil”.

Rouhani rejected Trump’s decision as “wrong, illegitimate, provocative and very dangerous”.

Senior cleric Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami told worshippers at Friday prayers at Tehran University that Muslims around the world should unite against Israel, state TV reported.

“We will not leave Palestinians alone,” worshippers chanted at Friday prayers in Tehran, TV reported.

Iran’s army chief Major General Mohammad Bagheri said Trump’s decision on Jerusalem was “unwise” and could fuel tension in the crisis-hit Middle East, Iran’s state news agency IRNA reported.

(Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Peter Graff)

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