The passage of the GOP tax bill, confirms that Trump is no populist. The decision to abruptly reverse the United States’ policy and officially recognize the city of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel proves he is no Nationalist. Instead, he seems to be actively working on stoking drama in all of our global hotspots – likely to distract from the ongoing investigations into his probable conspiracy to take the White House with the help of Vladimir Putin. Now he’s threatening United Nations members if they don’t go along with the Jerusalem decision.
It’s the ultimate “screw you” to people of diverse faiths at the Holidays. Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Palestinians all view the site as holy. The Palestinians had plans to make the eastern part of the city the capital of their future state.
That may play well with Trump’s extremist right-wing evangelical Christian base, but it’s also guaranteed to trigger conflicts around the world.
Experts have said Trump’s Jerusalem decision was “botched,” and it has already led to conflict with Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, and of course, Palestine. The Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has stated that Trump is no longer qualified to sponsor the peace process with Israel.
The UK, France, Germany, Sweden and Italy made a joint statement that Trump’s abrupt decision was “unhelpful in terms of prospects for peace.” In a meeting of the U.N. Security Council, they hoped to stop the move to recognize Jerusalem as belonging to Israel, but the United States stopped the decision with veto power.
Left stunned by the move; the United Nations General Assembly is holding an emergency session on Thursday to vote on a similar resolution to oppose recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. The United States can’t veto the decision of the General Assembly but also is not legally required to abide by it.
Now Trump is threatening any of 193 members that back the UN resolution, saying he’ll cut off financial aid if they go against his choice. He went as far as saying, “We don’t care.”
“They take hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars, and then they vote against us,” Trump told reporters at the White House.
“Let them vote against us. We’ll save a lot. We don’t care,” said Trump.
US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley warned UN members that Trump was taking names of who voted for the resolution, saying “know that the president and the US take this vote personally”. She called the Security Council’s previous draft an “insult” and sent a letter to member states about the upcoming emergency General Assembly meeting.
“The president will be watching this vote carefully and has requested I report back on those countries who voted against us. We will take note of each and every vote on this issue,” she wrote, according to journalists who were shown the letter.
“The president’s announcement does not affect final status negotiations in any way, including the specific boundaries of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem,” she added. “The president also made sure to support the status quo of Jerusalem’s holy sites.”
Taking a cue from Trump, she posted about it on Twitter:
At the UN we're always asked to do more & give more. So, when we make a decision, at the will of the American ppl, abt where to locate OUR embassy, we don't expect those we've helped to target us. On Thurs there'll be a vote criticizing our choice. The US will be taking names. pic.twitter.com/ZsusB8Hqt4
— Nikki Haley (@nikkihaley) December 19, 2017
If Trump wanted to create a distraction from the Mueller investigation, he sure did it. Now the Palestinians are accusing Trump, and rightly so, of intimidation.
“We see that the United States, which was left alone, is now resorting to threats. No honourable, dignified country would bow down to this pressure,” the Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs told a joint news conference with the Palestinian Foreign Minister in Ankara on Wednesday before travelling to New York.
Featured image: Jerusalem via Wikipedia with Trump by Gage Skidmore (CC BY 2.0)
