Abbas: Moving U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem Would ‘Destroy the Peace Process’

The Palestinian Authority over the weekend continued its campaign of threats against U.S. President Donald Trump’s plans to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, according to Palestinian Media Watch, said explicitly that if Trump moves the embassy, it will “destroy the peace process.”

“We want to hear what he says when he enters the White House – but if this step is taken, it will destroy the peace process,” PA mouthpiece Al Hayat Al Jadida quoted Abbas as saying last week.

PA papers have been running a campaign of threats, including intimations of outright violence, if Trump moves ahead with his campaign pledge to move the embassy.

A cartoon appearing in Al Hayat Al Jadida last week printed a cartoon titled “Moving the Embassy” which shows Trump using a golf club to putt a lit cartoon-style bomb into a hole as if it were a golf ball, PMW documented. A dove symbolizing peace is looking out of the hole, next to which stands a flag with “Jerusalem” written on it in Arabic and English.

Also last week, the paper quoted a Fatah spokesman in Europe, Jamal Nazzal, as saying transferring the embassy would arouse “the rage of the world.”

“Fatah Spokesman in Europe Jamal Nazzal … warned that the rage of the world will burn, and that the gates of the conflict will open to the unknown if it is transferred. … He expressed hope that [US President-elect Donald] Trump will act with the necessary level of responsibility, and said: ‘If he does not do so, it will fan the flames of the Arab and Muslim world, and will create rifts between him and other international parties,'” the Palestinian paper reported.

Earlier this month the Mufti of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City warned that moving the embassy would be an assault against Palestinians and “all Muslims.”

“The pledge to move the embassy is not just an assault against Palestinians but against Arabs and Muslims, who will not remain silent,” Muhammad Ahmad Hussein said in his sermon last week.

Mahmoud Al-Habbash, Abbas’s senior adviser on religious and Islamic affairs characterized the planned move by the administration three weeks ago as a “declaration of war on all Muslims.”