Speaking from a meeting of Arab League foreign ministers in Cairo on Saturday, Lebanese Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil called for “pre-emptive measures” against the U.S. decision to move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
He said this should begin with “diplomatic measures” and then proceed to “political, then economic and financial sanctions” against the United States.
Bassil was not the only attendee at the Arab League emergency meeting to blast President Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul-Gheit of Egypt joined with Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki to call upon other nations to “recognize the State of Palestine with east Jerusalem as its capital in response to Trump’s decision,” according to the Associated Press.
“The decision amounts to the legalization of occupation,” Aboul-Gheit declared. Al-Maliki said the Trump administration revealed its “hostility and bias against the Palestinian people” and demanded a resolution of condemnation from the U.N. Security Council.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said Trump’s decision leaves the Middle East “on the verge of explosion.” Qatari Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani seemed on the same page as Bassil when he said “all possible measures under international law” should be taken to block the U.S. embassy move.
The Arab League collectively issued a statement that Trump’s decision is a “dangerous violation of international law” that “has no legal effect.”
The decision “deepens tension, ignites anger and threatens to plunge [the] region into more violence and chaos,” said the Sunday morning statement.
The Arab League includes a number of states, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which are traditionally seen as strong U.S. allies. The League also officially recognizes ‘Palestine” as a state, which is why Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki was at the emergency meeting.
Several of those U.S. allies have independently condemned Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem. “This step represents a big bias against the historic rights of the Palestinians and a big regression in the efforts to push the peace process forward. It is a violation of the American neutral position towards Jerusalem,” said the Saudi royal court.
The Jordanian government condemned the U.S. decision as “false and illegal because it consolidates the occupation.”
On Monday morning, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi weighed in, warning that the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem “may have dire consequences.”
Interestingly, senior political analyst Marwa Bishara of the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera essentially dismissed the Arab League statement as sound and fury signifying nothing. “I doubt that all this will come together and culminate in any serious decision or action plan. We will probably be left once again for the Arab street, rather than the Arab League, to do something moving forward,” Bishara sighed.
This sentiment was expressed even more strongly by Chicago-based Electronic Intifada founder Ali Abunimah, who sneered that the Arab League meeting “will amount to nothing, as it has amounted to nothing for decades.”
“All the statements being made by the Arab regimes are strictly for public consumption because the Arab public is clearly outraged as the massive demonstrations in cities across the world showed,” Abunimah elaborated. “But in reality, most of these regimes – Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt and Jordan – are very close to Israel. They either have formal or tacit ties and so they will do nothing in practice other than issue statements.”
Writing for the Associated Press, Hamza Hendawi also found the Arab League resolution “long on rhetoric but short on concrete actions,” noting it stopped short of endorsing the sanctions demanded by the Lebanese foreign minister.
“Arab diplomats said some Arab League members had wanted a more hard-line resolution, including punitive measures against countries that follow the U.S. example and recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital,” Hendawi reported, contradicting claims of “complete unity” among Arab League nations by Palestinian Foreign Minister al-Maliki.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry jumped in to denounce the Arab League statement as weak, saying it was “not as incisive as it was expected.”
“An instance of ignorance and maybe a certain policy caused the statement to be lacking in the required and adequate proportions,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi sniffed.
While Lebanon’s Bassil hopefully wondered if the “calamity” of Trump’s decision might “bring us together and wake us from our slumber,” it seems equally likely that Trump could be effectively calling the Arab League’s bluff on some of its non-negotiable demands for resolving the Palestinian question, such as the status of Jerusalem.