Trump to Recognize Jerusalem as Israeli Capital?

Today’s Top Stories

1. Media reports continue buzzing that Trump will recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and possibly move the US embassy there from Tel Aviv. He’s expected to lay out his plans in a speech on Wednesday. The Washington Post shed the most light on the administration’s decision-making process. Trump faces a Friday deadline on whether to sign a waiver that would leave the embassy in Tel Aviv. More at the New York Times.

Reactions were swift: The Palestinian Authority said the peace process will end and sought an emergency meeting of the Arab League. launched its own diplomatic campaign, while Hamas threatened a renewed intifada, and Jordan said it would strengthen terror groups. And the UN General Assembly’s response? Well, 151 states disavowed Israeli ties to the Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, CNN reports that the State Department is preparing for the possibility of violent protests outside American embassies and consulates.

2. Arabic media reports say Israel carried out an airstrike on an Iranian base in Syria, killing 12 Iranians.

3. Hundreds of Israelis paid their respects as Sgt. Ron Yitzak Kokia was laid to rest in Tel Aviv. The 19-year-old was stabbed to death at a bus stop in Arad on Thursday night in what police suspect was a terror attack. Security forces are still searching for the attacker.

4. Messing Up History at the Daily Mail: It’s hard to decide whether the errors are the result of sheer ignorance, poor copy editing or a mixture of both.

5. Success! Oxford Dictionary Removes Offensive Examples: Editors revise Oxford Dictionary after conceding examples were rude.

Israel and the Palestinians

• Israel pulled out of a Dead Sea scrolls exhibit in Frankfurt after German officials said they couldn’t guarantee the artifacts would be returned if Palestinians or Jordanians made a claim on them. Jerusalem Post coverage.

“If Germany is unwilling to clearly express the legal status of the fragments of Qumran as Israeli world-cultural-heritage goods, it would dramatically change the coordinates in our German-Israeli relations. And it would mean the construction of a wall toward the places of the birth of Christianity in the holy country, because it would be the same for Bethlehem, Jericho, east Jerusalem and many other places of Jesus’s work,” [Deputy Mayor Uwe] Becker said.

• Is Trump eyeing a plan to expand a Palestinian state into Sinai?

• International Criminal Court prosecutor Fatou Bensouda closed the chapter on a Mavi Marmara war crimes probe. The Jerusalem Post explains that her decision effectively ends years of Palestinian and Turkish attempts to prosecute Israeli military and political officials over the affair. Ten Turkish nationals were killed when the IDF intercepted the Gaza-bound flotilla in 2010.

Crucial to her decision was her finding that “there was no reasonable basis to believe that the identified crimes were committed on a large-scale or as part of a plan or policy.”

• A group of 24 international law experts have concluded that last year’s UN Security Council 2334, which condemned Israeli settlements, was flawed, and is a “blemish” on New Zealand’s diplomatic reputation. The New Zealand Herald picked up on their report:

A report from 24 international law experts has now said the resolution “fell short of an open, balanced, and thorough consideration of all the relevant factual and legal issues [which] resulted in legal findings that did not adequately take into account the legal, historical, political and military complexities of these territories and peoples”.

The experts met at a forum at The Peace Palace at The Hague in June this year at the invitation of The Hague Initiative for International Cooperation (Thinc) and the International Conference for Truth, Justice, and Peace (ICTIP). Its report was released at the end of October.

• A delegation of African parliament speakers is due to visit the Knesset on Tuesday. According to Ynet, “The parliamentarians will be arriving from such countries as Uganda, Benin, Ghana, Cameroon, Tanzania, Seychelles and South Sudan. The Israeli parliament is also still waiting to hear back from parliament speakers of several additional countries.”

• Globes: A memorandum of understanding for an Israel-Europe gas pipeline will be signed on Tuesday in Cyprus. Connecting Israel and Italy through the territorial waters of Cyprus and Greece, the 2,000 km pipeline would be the world’s longest underwater pipeline. It’s due to be completed in 2025.

Around the World

• Labour suspends ANOTHER activist over anti-Semitism allegations after claims she runs a Twitter account that said Jews ‘wring shekels’ out of the ‘holocaust industry’

• Argentine TV celebrity fired over anti-Semitic tweets. “Ursula Vargues was fired recently from ‘Us In The Morning’ a day after tweeting that Jews control the media.”

• Dutch Jews say former prime minister peddles anti-Semitism.

Commentary

• The possible US embassy move to Jerusalem was on my mind this weekend . . .

– Scott Anderson, Yishai Schwartz: On waiving the Jerusalem Embassy Act (or not)
– William Jacobson: Next week in Jerusalem?
– Wilson Shirley: Move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem
– Carolina Landsmann: Toward Israeli-Palestinian peace: The two-embassy solution
– Uri Friedman: Foreign policy by symbolic half-measures
– Prof. Abraham Ben-Zvi: A mistaken notion

• Plenty of spilled ink and burnt pixels on the latest airstrike in Syria . . .

– Ron Ben-Yishai: Strike on Iranian base in Syria: Dealing with problem while it’s still small
– Seth Frantzman: Airstrike on Iranian base in Syria raises questions
– Avi Issacharoff: With reported airstrike, Israel puts Syria, and Iran, on notice
– Amos Harel: Alleged Israeli strike in Syria is a signal to Iran and Russia
– Yoav Limor: A line in the sand
– Amb. Ron Prosor: Christmas has come early for Hezbollah chief Nasrallah

• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .

– Elliott Abrams: Israel’s mythical “isolation”
– Pinhas Inbari: Is reconciliation between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority possible?
– Bassam Tawil: Saudis fed up: ‘Palestinians milking us for decades’
– Peter Berkowitz: A plan to start disentangling Israel and the Palestinians (click via Twitter)
– Gil Troy: The UN didn’t create Israel. We did.
– Raphael Ahren: Jerusalem ignores the UN’s forgotten partition plan of 2012 at its peril
– David Hirsh: This new definition of anti-Semitism is only a threat to anti-Semites
– Shira Ruderman: Israelis know nothing about American Jews
– New York Post (staff-ed): The perversity of the Israel-boycott blacklist

Featured image: CC BY-NC-ND gato-gato-gato; jet CC BY-NC Israel Defense Forces; Dead Sea scroll via Wikimedia Commons; reading CC BY Georgie Pauwels;

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