US recognition of Jerusalem 'kiss of death' for peace process - BBC News

7/12/2017

US recognition of Jerusalem 'kiss of death' for peace process

Why the city of Jerusalem matters

An expected announcement by President Donald Trump that the US will become the first country to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital has been dubbed a "kiss of death" for the Middle East peace process by the Palestinians.

But an Israeli minister urged other countries to follow the US lead.

Mr Trump is expected to confirm the decision in a speech later.

He will also approve moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, US officials say.

This could, however, be delayed because of logistical and security issues, as well as the need to find a location.

The prospect of Jerusalem recognition has prompted global reaction ranging from concern to alarm.

The Palestinians' representative to the UK, Manuel Hassassian, told the BBC that the changes to US policy on Jerusalem amounted to a "kiss of death" for the two-state solution in peace efforts and were like a "declaration of war".

"This is the last straw that will break the camel's back," he said. "I don't mean war in terms of conventional war, I mean war in terms of diplomacy."

Palestinian general delegate to UK tells Today Trump's planned acknowledgement of Jerusalem as capital is 'declaring war'

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has yet to comment officially, but Education Minister Naftali Bennett described it as a "big step towards regional peace" and said other countries should move their embassies too.

He added that it would force Israel's "enemies" to accept that Jerusalem would never be divided.

But Pope Francis called for the "status quo" to be respected. Dialogue would only come through "recognising the rights of all people" in the region, he said.

Theresa May said she would speak to Mr Trump about the US move.

The UK's position on Jerusalem had not changed, the prime minister told Parliament. The city's status should be the subject of negotiation and it should be the shared capital of Israel and a Palestinian state, she added.

World reacts to Trump move on Jerusalem

The alternatives to a two-state solution

Why settlement issue is so difficult

Israel has always regarded Jerusalem as its capital, while the Palestinians want East Jerusalem to be the capital of a future Palestinian state.

In recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital, the US becomes the first country to do so since the foundation of Israel in 1948.

What is so contentious about Jerusalem's status?

The issue goes to the heart of Israel's conflict with the Palestinians, who are backed by the Arab and wider Islamic world.

The city is home to key religious sites sacred to Judaism, Islam and Christianity, especially in East Jerusalem.

Map of Jerusalem

Israel annexed the sector from Jordan after the 1967 Middle East war and regards the entire city as its indivisible capital.

According to the 1993 Israel-Palestinian peace accords, its final status is meant to be discussed in the latter stages of talks.

Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem has never been recognised internationally and all countries maintain their embassies in Tel Aviv.

Since 1967, Israel has built a dozen settlements, home to about 200,000 Jews, in East Jerusalem. These are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.

In recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital, the US could reinforce Israel's position that settlements in the east are valid Israeli communities.

What is the US proposing?

Trump administration officials said recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital was an acknowledgment of "historical and current reality" by the US government.

However, specific boundaries of the city would remain subject to a final status agreement, the officials said. The status of holy sites would not be affected.

What makes Jerusalem so holy?

Mr Trump would also direct the state department to begin the process of moving the US embassy to Jerusalem - but this could take several years as it still has to be designed and built and security concerns would need to be addressed.

He originally promised the move to pro-Israel voters during his campaign for the presidency.

The US officials added that the president would still sign a regular waiver blocking the embassy's move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem until the new building was completed.

Successive presidents have signed waivers on the grounds of national security for the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Act, which mandates moving the embassy.

Mr Trump has vowed to pursue a peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians, led by his son-in-law and top adviser Jared Kushner.

An administration official said the new US policy on Jerusalem was not designed to favour Israel in that process.

What other reaction has there been?

Palestinian protesters burned pictures of Donald Trump on Tuesday

Saudi Arabia, an ally of the US, called the new policy "a flagrant provocation to Muslims"

Hamas leader Ismail Haniya said recognition crossed "all red lines"

China warned against escalating tensions in the Middle East

Jordan's King Abdullah said the decision would "undermine efforts to resume the peace process"

Egypt's President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi urged Mr Trump "not to complicate the situation in the region"

Turkey called for a summit of Muslim countries in December to discuss the developments

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said "Muslims must stand united against this major plot"

No sign it's a bargaining chip

Analysis by Barbara Plett-Usher, state department correspondent, BBC News

By recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital President Trump is fulfilling a campaign promise. There is no other obvious reason he is doing this now.

Administration officials said he would simply be acknowledging reality - that Jerusalem functions as Israel's capital. They said the decision would not determine final status issues such as boundaries and sovereignty - that is still left to negotiations.

On other core issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Arab and Muslim leaders may be able to work with changes in the US approach but Jerusalem is also holy land, not just a disputed capital.

Jordan and Saudi Arabia are custodians of Islam's holy sites and have issued strong warnings that this move could inflame the Muslim world.

There is also no indication that this is a bargaining chip to advance the peace process: according to the officials, President Trump is not expected to publicly endorse a two-state solution.

It sounds like the Palestinians will get nothing. Perhaps there is a wider strategy at work but it looks like a workaround so the president can satisfy his pro-Israel voters.

North Korea Must Halt All Testing for Talks, U.S. Envoy Says - Bloomberg

North Korea Must Halt All Testing for Talks, U.S. Envoy Says

Bloomberg News

December 6, 2017, 6:37 PM GMT+11 Updated on December 6, 2017, 8:59 PM GMT+11

Ambassador to China Branstad speaks in Bloomberg interview

‘An opportunity for us to get back to the bargaining table’

The U.S. would be ready to talk with North Korea if it renounced further nuclear or missile tests and followed through on the pledge, U.S. Ambassador to China Terry Branstad said.

“If they announce that they’re not going to be doing any more nuclear tests and they’re not going to be launching any more missiles,” Branstad told Bloomberg Television on Wednesday, when asked what it would take for talks to start. “If they announce that and do that, I think there’s an opportunity for us to get back to the bargaining table.”

Branstad, speaking on the sidelines of the Fortune Global Forum in Guangzhou, also said that sanctions against North Korea were “starting to have an impact.” Calling Kim Jong Un’s push for nuclear weapons “the biggest threat to humankind right now,” the former Iowa governor repeated the Trump administration’s call for China to cut off oil sales to Kim Jong Un’s regime.

“We believe we need to go further,” Branstad said. “We think oil and also these North Korean workers working in China and other countries, that needs to stop.”

‘Starting Gun’

President Donald Trump has sought to pressure China to rein in its ally and neighbor, which last week tested a new type of intercontinental ballistic missile. Kim said the test showed that North Korea’s nuclear program was complete because it could deliver an atomic warhead anywhere in the U.S.

While Kim hasn’t yet proven he has the technology to put a warhead on an ICBM and deliver it safely to a target, the test has put new pressure on the U.S. and its allies to find a solution. By declaring his weapons program complete, Kim may have created a path to resume negotiations from a position of strength.

“I interpret this as a starting gun, signaling that he’s opening up the negotiating pas de deux, the dance,” Daniel Russel, who until June was assistant U.S. secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, told reporters in Beijing after the test. “The likeliest scenario is that we’ll start seeing some initiatives from one quarter or another and there will be some testing of the ground for negotiations.”

The United Nations’ top official for political affairs is in Pyongyang this week to discuss the nuclear issue, and countries from Canada to Germany are seeking to help facilitate talks. Branstad told the economic forum later Wednesday that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who was attending the same event, would meet with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to discuss North Korea on Dec. 19.

A spokesman for Trudeau declined to comment on the possible meeting.

Military Drills

Meanwhile, the saber-rattling has continued on both sides, with the U.S. sending a B-1B bomber to join massive aerial drills with South Korea on Wednesday. North Korea had previously threatened to retaliate against the exercise with the “highest-level hard-line countermeasure in history.”

The U.S. must work with China and others to convince North Korea “what they are doing is a suicide mission that makes no sense,” Branstad told the forum. He declined to rule out a Trump visit to North Korea at some point, but said the timing “is probably not right.”

Branstad, 71, has ties with Chinese President Xi Jinping that go back decades. The two men met in 1985, when Xi visited Iowa as part of a delegation from the northern Chinese province of Hebei. Chinese officials refer to the envoy as an “old friend of the Chinese people,” a designation reserved for foreigners who’ve demonstrated a particular understanding of the country.

Facebook, WeChat

But the ambassador told Bloomberg that the “very good” chemistry demonstrated in meetings between Trump and Xi was more important. “Building a relationship of trust and respect hopefully can go a long ways to these two big countries, the two biggest economies in the world, working together,” he said.

Still, the U.S. has sharpened its tone toward China since Trump’s state visit last month to Beijing, which ended with no big breakthroughs on trade. The Trump administration has in recent weeks hit China with a probe into the country’s aluminum imports, and accused its leadership of backsliding on market-oriented reforms.

Branstad said he agreed with such criticism. He cited as an example how China blocks access to Facebook while the U.S. allows Americans to use Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s WeChat messaging service.

“There are areas where we think China has not been fair, their market is not open,” Branstad said.

— With assistance by Peter Martin, Tom Mackenzie, Dexter Roberts, Ken Wills, and Chris Fournier

Chinese state media takes praise for leader to new heights as Xi tightens grip - Reuters

DECEMBER 6, 2017 / 6:21 PM / UPDATED 3 HOURS AGO

Chinese state media takes praise for leader to new heights as Xi tightens grip

Reuters Staff

BEIJING (Reuters) - The official newspaper of China’s ruling Communist Party has lavished unusually high levels of praise on President Xi Jinping’s signature leadership, as China’s strongest leader in decades consolidates his personal power.

Xi’s leadership was cast as having forged a new way of governance for China that the paper said had been applauded worldwide and had brought China to new heights of economic, political and diplomatic success.

The paean, even more effusive than usual for the state mouthpiece, came in two parts written under the official nom de plume of the People’s Daily for important commentaries and was carried on its front page on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Billed as an exposition on the changes in leadership, thought, mission and “rejuvenation” for China revealed during a course-setting meeting of the top party leadership in October, it marked the latest assault in a propaganda onslaught vaunting Xi’s contributions to China and the world.

Xi has amassed positions and accolades at a level much higher than his immediate predecessors, being named the “core” of the party leadership last year and having his named theory written into the party charter in October.

Such an honor has not been given to a sitting leader since Mao Zedong, communist China’s founding leader.

Chinese state media has taken praise for Xi to new levels since the twice-a-decade conclave. Xi was given Mao-like prominence with his portrait taking up nearly the entire front page of the People’s Daily.

“A unique path, a unique theory, a unique system, a unique culture; Xi Jinping’s thought on socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era has developed a rich path for China that has transcended Western-centric theory, and hugely excited many developing countries to confidently choose their own path,” the paper said.

“Without Xi Jinping thought on socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era, we would not have a party center that is moving closer daily to the center of the world stage,” the People’s Daily said.

China has expanded the reach of its foreign policy and military under Xi, who has talked about the need for China to be confident in its own political system and to provide Chinese “solutions” and “wisdom” for global issues.

However, concerns abroad about China using its influence to sway foreign business, academic, and political institutions have also grown.

Xi told foreign political groups in Beijing on Friday that China would not export its political system and would provide more opportunities for the world through its development. He was speaking as he opened China’s first ever “high-level” inter-party dialogue.

Reporting by Christian Shepherd; Editing by Paul Tait

A small Italian town can teach the world how to defuse controversial monuments - Guardian

A small Italian town can teach the world how to defuse controversial monuments

Carlo Invernizzi-Accetti

In the face of calls to both ‘destroy’ and ‘preserve’ a fascist monument, the town of Bolzano opted for what appears in retrospect a far smarter strategy

‘The transformed monument therefore invites people to reflect on the town’s complex history in a way that is neither simply celebratory nor in denial, but rather contextualized.’

‘The transformed monument therefore invites people to reflect on the town’s complex history in a way that is neither simply celebratory nor in denial, but rather contextualized.’

Wednesday 6 December 2017 18.00 AEDT

Coming to terms with national history isn’t always easy. Whether because of civil war, political oppression, or simply a change of values, monuments and other vestiges of the past often remind us that what we held dear in other ages doesn’t necessarily chime with what we cherish today. The bitter controversy – and deadly protests – sparked earlier this year by the proposed removal of a statue of Gen Robert E Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia, are a ringing reminder of this.

The small northern Italian town of Bolzano may provide the model for a better way of dealing with such thorny issues. For several decades, what are now the town’s financial offices have been housed in a fascist-era building displaying a massive bas-relief of Benito Mussolini on horseback, bearing the slogan “Credere, Obbedire, Combattere” (“Believe, Obey, Combat”) on the side. Although Italy’s fascist past is officially condemned, the monument stood untouched until a 2011 directive from the national government formally required the municipal administration to do something about it.

Charlottesville started with a statue. Will Americans confront their history now?

Steven W Thrasher

In the face of calls to both “destroy” and “preserve” the monument, the town opted for what appears in retrospect a far smarter strategy.

A public bid was launched, soliciting ideas over how to “defuse and contextualize” the politically charged frieze. Open to artists, architects, historians, and “anyone involved in the cultural sphere”, the bid explicitly stated that the intention was to “transform the bas-relief into a place of memory … so that it will no longer be visible directly, but accessible thoughtfully, within an appropriately explanatory context”.

Almost 500 proposals were submitted and evaluated by a jury composed of local civil society figures, including a history professor, a museum curator, an architect, an artist and a journalist. This jury recommended five proposals, voted upon by the municipal council. All the proposals and proceedings were documented online and open to public scrutiny.

An image of the monumental frieze before it was transformed shows Mussolini as a Roman emperor on horseback.

The winning proposal is as powerful as it is simple. Superimposed upon the bas-relief is now an LED-illuminated inscription of a quote by the German Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt that reads “Nobody has the right to obey” in the three local languages: Italian, German and Ladin.

As the two artists who originally made the proposal, Arnold Holzknecht and Michele Bernardi, elucidate in their explanatory text, the “minimalism” of the intervention is explicitly meant to contrast the “grandiloquence” of the fascist-era style, whereas the content of the quotation is meant as a “direct answer” to the “invitation to blind obedience” contained in the fascist slogan.

What is most important, however, is that the original monument remains visible through the inscription. This is meant to emphasize that memory – and therefore history – is not a “blank slate” on which we can arbitrarily write whatever happens to be congenial to us in the present. Rather, it is a process of sedimentation, by which the past is never completely effaced, but constantly re-interpreted through the lens of the present.

The new inscription reads ‘Nobody has the right to obey’ Photograph: Città di Bolzano

The transformed monument therefore invites people to reflect on the town’s complex history in a way that is neither simply celebratory nor in denial, but rather contextualized – and for that reason all the more challenging and profound.

A sign of its success is that it almost completely failed to generate controversy, either nationally or locally. Inaugurated with a purposely sober ceremony on 5 November, the installation only managed to stir the predictable recriminations of representatives from the local neo-fascist party, one of whom decried it as a “Taliban act” intended to “efface a portion of the country’s history”. The very fact that these objections so patently failed to grasp the point of the installation has given them little following.

Memory is a process of sedimentation, by which the past is never completely effaced, but constantly re-interpreted

This local experiment with the politics of memory nonetheless deserves greater attention. Virtually all existing countries have to face difficult questions over how to relate to past instances of violence, injustice and oppression – often publicly sanctioned.

Pretending the past never happened is clearly not a promising way of learning from it. But neither is passively accepting the past’s own way of representing itself to the future. Which is why contextualizing monuments from a troubled era, through a creative procedure that is at once inclusive, transparent and educational, may actually be the best solution.

Hundreds gather in Charlottesville for vigil against violence

This is, after all, another way of reading the message contained in the quote from Hannah Arendt inscribed over the fascist monument in Bolzano. To say that “nobody has the right to obey” is a reminder that our actions are always the result of a choice – and therefore judgment – in the present.

The quote by Hannah Arendt implies implies that we cannot in good faith disclaim responsibility for things we have the power to act upon – such as the monuments we inherit from our history. Even letting them stand untouched is a way of affirming something in the present. The question is what we want that message to be.

Apparently, during the deliberations that preceded the decision to remove the statue of Robert E Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia, a proposal was made to add more “historical context” to the monument. That might have been an opportunity for the city to come to terms more openly and inclusively with its troubled past, but the proposal was ultimately rejected.

Statues are not the issue. These are ‘history wars’, a battle over the past

David Olusoga

In contrast, the town of Bolzano has resolutely taken a stand in favor of freedom and civic courage. It is only to be hoped that other administrations facing similar problems around the world can live up to this model.

Carlo Invernizzi-Accetti is Assistant Professor of Political Science at The City College of New York

A civilised society supports people in need, but our brutal system shatters lives - Guardian

A civilised society supports people in need, but our brutal system shatters lives

Aditya Chakrabortty

Simon’s story is a tale of 21st-century Britain. He worked, he cared for his mother, he played by the rules. But when he fell, there was no safety net

Wednesday 6 December 2017 16.59 AEDT

Simon’s death certificate tidies away his life in a few terse official phrases. Date of death: 12 November 2017. Causes: “a) Fatty liver” and “b) Alcohol misuse”. No bureaucratic curiosity about how a 51-year-old’s life came to be cut so short.

Which leaves his only brother, Dave, dealing with the grief and asking all the whys. Why did Simon die so young? Why did no one else try to help?

No obituaries will be written for Simon, no plaques mounted, no tributes passed by politicians. But if you want to understand how Britain fails so many people in so many places, it’s stories like his you need to study.

Some people’s lives are like arrows, flying straight to their destinations. Not Simon’s. The Rhymney Valley, in south Wales, is where he was born and died, but it wasn’t where he spent most of his adult years, and it was never where he meant to land up. Bright boys, he and Dave had one notion drummed into them: get an education, and get out. On TV, Dave remembers, “We’d see the yuppie revolution going on in London – the Porsches and the red braces. It may as well have been another country.” For them, Thatcher meant mines closing, factories shutting, men being laid off in their thousands, and families going under.

Yet there are so many people like Simon, all surplus to requirements of this shrunken economy

Both sons flew away. Simon was the high-flyer, leaving Wales to do a science degree, going to Cambridge for postgraduate study, and becoming a software engineer with a giant defence firm. He married and settled far away, in Bushey, on the outskirts of London. He had got on his bike; he had looked for work. Now he was earning three times what his younger brother was making, and raring to join the yuppies.

Just as he was starting to live the dream, the dream fell to bits. He got divorced. He got laid off. Then their mother’s breast cancer returned – this time for good. The prodigal son moved back, moved in, and became her carer. Dave doesn’t remember him complaining once during the years their mother spent deteriorating and then dying.

Such setbacks await all of us, but one test of any civilised society is how well it supports us through them. In Simon’s case, Britain botched this test – over and over again. By the time his mother died, he had spent seven years outside the job market. It was 2007, the start of the credit crunch, and the economy was slowing. Even in boomtown London such a gap on the CV would have raised recruiters’ eyebrows. Here in south Wales, where jobs were already scarce, it was the kiss of death. Besides, it simply did not have positions for Si, with his Cambridge postgrad and software engineering background.

Simon “spent 25 years building up to be somebody”, says Dave. A quarter-century observing the social mobility rules laid down by Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair. He had aspired, he’d grafted, he’d kept his side of the bargain. But while social mobility trumpets opportunity for individuals, it ignores the communities where those people live. The result was that Simon’s ambitions had outgrown his home, and now he was trapped.

Dave showed me the small terrace house their mother passed on to Simon, where he spent the last years of his life. No one was about as we walked through the speck of a village – just two long rows of cars parked outside the train station. This is the new Welsh commuter class that economists such as Cardiff University’s Calvin Jones talk about, the people who travel from the valleys to staff the call centres, shops and other minimum-wage employers in Cardiff or Newport.

Governments in Westminster and Cardiff Bay have spent decades promising to rebuild the shattered economy of south Wales. Serious money has been spent on shopping malls, new motorways and sweeteners for big business. Each time, the firms come, take the cash and – at best – leave a few poverty-paying jobs. You see the same cycle in so many deindustrialised parts of Britain. And each time, the politicians learn no lessons, and try the same thing again.

A few minutes from Simon’s old home is the town of Bargoed, where the greatest excitement in recent years was the opening of a Morrisons. Much of the rest of the high street is just memories: a huge statue to commemorate dead miners, the chapel turned into a library, and shop after shop with its shutters pulled down for good.

A rural bus services in Fochriw village, Bargoed. South Wales is one of the poorest regions of the UK.

Simon signed on at the jobcentre, which told him to apply for 35 jobs a week. He sent off to become a teaching assistant, a warehouse operative, all the minimum wage jobs going. Barely an application led to an interview. Sometimes, “angry and very down”, he’d miss his targets or appointments. He would get sanctioned, go broke, and have to call on Dave to tide him over.

After years of knockbacks, Simon declared he’d never be able to work again. It came almost as a relief. “It meant he didn’t have to think of himself as such a failure. Now he could be a victim.”

Simon had always been a pub man. But now he’d get up in the morning and start on a glass of watered-down scotch and a sci-fi DVD. By the end of a day, he’d have finished the DVDs, his fags and an entire bottle of Scotch. Why does Dave think no employer wanted him? His answer comes back in a small, tight voice. “No one wants a 50-year-old, unemployed, overweight, drinking guy on the books, do they?”

Yet there are so many of them, all surplus to the requirements of this shrunken economy. A GP in Bargoed estimates that up to one in 10 of her patients have some kind of drink or drug addiction. Up to one in three suffer depression or anxiety. In these parts, a newborn boy can expect to live just over 61 years in good health; in the richest parts of London, it’s 75 years.

Having been one of Blair’s strivers, Simon was now one of George Osborne’s skivers. He was moved on to disability benefits, before the Department for Work and Pensions assessors declared him fit for work. His money would periodically stop until his GP contested the verdict. This spring, he was moved on to universal credit, which meant six weeks with barely a penny. Again and again, it was Dave who had to bail him out. It was Dave who suggested jobs Simon could apply for, small businesses he might start. The younger brother was filling in for the state, while Si lived in ripped clothes and ate junk. “The government was abusing a vulnerable man.”

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Alcoholic Simon would go to the local NHS drink service once every few weeks – and every few months, he’d end up in such a bad state he would be admitted to hospital. They’d “dry him out, then spit him out”, says Dave. According to the thinktank the Nuffield Trust, the Welsh health system is underfunded by £500m a year.

Simon died in his small house, waiting to go back into hospital to dry out. He grew up in a town with men who’d had to dig out children from the Aberfan mining disaster; he died the year Grenfell Tower burned down. When such obvious tragedies strike, the politicians and the press vow to tackle the social injustices that caused them. But Simon was just one man dying in plain sight of his neighbours, his family and state officials. Far easier to chalk up his death to a fatty liver and booze, rather than inequality and austerity and the false promises peddled by politicians from Thatcher to May. A dead man, a dying town: he spent his last days being told he’s fit for work in an economy that has next to no work.

What’s left is a younger brother beating himself up about what he should have done and angry at others for letting them both down.

Before we part, Dave asks: “Why wasn’t there someone who could step in and help? Is that naive of me? To think that a modern, 21st-century society could do that for people who need it?”

The names in this piece have been changed and details obscured in order to protect the identity of Simon’s family