BDS Movement statement on US decision to recognise Jerusalem as capital of apartheid Israel

international | rights, freedoms and repression | press release Saturday December 09, 2017 22:13 by ipsc - Irish Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Press Release - Irish Palestine Solidarity Campaign - Dec 6th 2017

We carry below an official statement from the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee, the leadership of the global BDS movement. The IPSC has called an emergency lunchtime protest against the move this Friday 8th December between 1pm and 2pm:

U.S. President Donald Trump’s reported plan to recognize occupied Jerusalem as the “capital of Israel” is an appalling attempt to give legitimacy to Israel’s illegal control of the city by a xenophobic and racist U.S. administration whose own legitimacy is precarious at best. This anti-Palestinian and illegal act reverses decades of official U.S. policy regarding Jerusalem and contradicts the international consensus.

Palestinians, supported by the absolute majority in the Arab world and millions of people of conscience worldwide, will not accept this latest U.S. surrender to Israel’s extremist agenda. We shall continue to insist on attaining our UN-stipulated rights and ending Israel’s regime of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid through popular resistance and the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

As Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, speaking for the Palestine Liberation Organization, has reacted, the Trump administration “is undermining the global rule of law, as well as American standing, credibility, security, and interests around the world.”

This recognition would be the most serious form of complicity to date by the administration in cementing Israel’s apartheid regime in Jerusalem and accelerating its ethnic cleansing of indigenous Palestinians from their city.

It encourages the Israeli government and illegal settlers to steal and destroy more Palestinian homes, expropriate more Palestinian land, and revoke the residency rights of more Palestinians for whom Jerusalem is home.

This latest move by the Trump administration also encourages Israel to continue barring most Palestinians in the occupied territories from entering occupied Jerusalem, including to worship at our sacred Muslim and Christian holy sites in the Old City, visit our family and friends, access medical care, and do business. It legitimizes cutting many Palestinians off from a center of their cultural, spiritual and political life.

It further demonstrates the close connections and shared fanatic worldview of the current irrational U.S. administration and its far-right Israeli counterpart. Both incite and exploit racism, xenophobia and fear for political gain. It also further fuels the belief of right-wing Israelis, including government officials, that they can continue ruling over millions of Palestinians indefinitely without granting them their freedom or rights.

Trump’s policies on Palestine underscore the critical importance of the BDS movement for realizing Palestinian freedom, justice and equality.

For decades, the United States has supported, justified and shielded from accountabilityIsrael’s policies of ethnically cleansing Palestinians, stealing our land to build illegal Jewish-only settlements on it, and denying Palestinians in East Jerusalem and elsewhere our rights under international law.

While committed to funding Israel’s military aggression and war crimes to the tune of 38 billion dollars over 10 years, the U.S. government continues to cut social funding on education, health, jobs, environmental protection and other necessities in the United States. These severe cuts are affecting the most marginalized communities in the country, particularly people of color. This further underlines the urgent need to connect the struggle for Palestinian liberation with the struggles for racial, social, economic and environmental justice in the United States and beyond.

It is long past time for the world to apply concrete pressure on Israel to respect Palestinian rights through support for our struggle for rights and dignity.

Notes to Editors:

• East Jerusalem is recognized by the United Nations as an inseparable part of the occupied Palestinian territory, and no other state in the world recognizes Jerusalem (East or West) as Israel’s capital.
  
• Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem is illegal under international law. When Israel passed in 1980 a Basic Law which declared Jerusalem, “complete and united,” as the “capital of Israel,” the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 476 stating that “measures which have altered the geographic, demographic and historical character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem are null and void and constitute a flagrant violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War and also constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East.”
  
• UN General Assembly Resolution 181 (II) designates Jerusalem as a whole and its environs as “a corpus separatum under a special international regime,” to be administered by the UN.
  
• Since militarily occupying East Jerusalem in 1967, Israel has stripped more than 14,000Palestinian Jerusalemites of their right to live in their home city. It has claimed the city and annexed its eastern part in a move that has been repeatedly condemned as illegal by the United Nations and international community. Israel rarely grants Palestinians the required permits to build in the city, and subjects Palestinians to racist and violent policing and widespread discrimination when it comes to education and other municipal services.