Jerusalem: For years, Palestinians in the crowded East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Silwan have complained that the walls of their homes were settling and cracking, disturbed by an underground archaeological dig led by a right-wing Jewish settler group.
When that dig was officially unveiled, not with a ribbon-cutting but with the ceremonial smashing of a brick wall, it was President Donald Trump's ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, who swung the first sledgehammer.
US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman uses a sledgehammer to smash the last remaining wall in front of the Pilgrimage Road, at a ceremony in East Jerusalem.
The reverberations were literal and metaphorical.
US ambassadors to Israel, to avoid being seen as taking Israel's side in the conflict with the Palestinians, have long avoided public appearances in East Jerusalem. Israel captured East Jerusalem from Jordan in 1967 and then annexed it. Most of the world considers it illegally occupied, and the Palestinians want it as the capital of a future state.
But Friedman has pulverised diplomatic barriers before. In October, he attended a business conference in the West Bank settlement of Ariel, reportedly the first official visit to a Jewish settlement by a US ambassador.
But his starring role at the event run by the City of David Foundation on Sunday was more provocative. This time he was keynoting an event for a group that critics consider at the vanguard of efforts to bolster Israel's claims to sovereignty in the areas of East Jerusalem immediately around the Old City.
US ambassador to Israel David Friedman (left) talks to American business magnate Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam at the opening of an ancient road at the City of David, a popular archaeological and tourist site in the Palestinian neighbourhood of Silwan in east Jerusalem. Credit:AP
On Wednesday, Jason Greenblatt, Trump's special Middle East envoy, who has pummeled Palestinian officials on Twitter, told an interviewer that he had never had reason to criticise Netanyahu or his government for their treatment of the Palestinians.
And on Thursday, Greenblatt suggested that peace would be more attainable "if people stop pretending settlements, or what I like to call neighbourhoods and cities, are the reason for the lack of peace."
But it was Friedman's remarks on Sunday — and the image of his wielding a sledgehammer beneath Silwan — that Palestinians said had reached a new low.
"Every time I think they've done their worst, they come up with something more," said Hanan Ashrawi, the veteran Palestine Liberation Organisation official. "They will go to any length to show collusion, identification with and support for all these illegal acts, for the transformation of the character of Jerusalem, and for the willful targeting of Palestinians."
"To have policy-making people buy into this and reinforce it, using religious claims to shape 21st-century political realities? This is dangerous," she added. "It tells the world that the US is complicit, and that there's no limit to what it's going to do."
Friedman, however, insisted that he and his White House colleagues were merely describing things as they are, however difficult the Palestinians may find that to hear. "The truth is the only foundation on which peace will come to this area," he said.
The New York Times
Source: Read Full Article