Netanyahu: Palestinians must face reality over Jerusalem
Israel's prime minister has said
Palestinians must "get to grips with" the reality that Jerusalem is
Israel's capital in order to move towards peace.
Benjamin Netanyahu said Jerusalem had been the capital
of Israel for 3,000 years and had "never been the capital of any other
people". He spoke amid ongoing protests in the Muslim and Arab world at a
US decision recognising Jerusalem as the capital. Violence flared near the US
embassy in Lebanon and elsewhere on Sunday.
Speaking in Paris after talks with French President
Emmanuel Macron, Mr Netanyahu said efforts to deny the "millennial
connection of the Jewish people to Jerusalem" were "absurd". "You
can read it in a very fine book - it's called the Bible," he said.
"You can read it after the Bible. You can hear it in the history of Jewish
communities throughout our diaspora... Where else is the capital of Israel, but
in Jerusalem? "The sooner the Palestinians come to grips with this
reality, the sooner we will move towards peace."
Raft of protests
There has been widespread condemnation of President
Donald Trump's decision - announced on Wednesday - to reverse decades of US
neutrality on the status of Jerusalem which cuts to the heart of the ongoing
conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.The city is home to key religious
sites sacred to Judaism, Islam and Christianity, especially in East Jerusalem. Israel has always regarded Jerusalem as
its capital, while the Palestinians claim East Jerusalem - occupied by Israel
in the 1967 war - as the capital of a future Palestinian state.
Sunday has seen a further raft of protests at the
US move:
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In Beirut, riot police used teargas and water cannon to stop
hundreds of protesters from reaching the US embassy
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Further protests took place in Cairo and Rabat, the
Moroccan capital
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In the Palestinian territories themselves protests
continued while Israel said it had blown up a tunnel from Gaza, which it says
was being dug to enable militant attacks
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Thousands of people demonstrated outside the US
embassy in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, some waving banners reading
"Palestine is in our hearts"
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A burning object was thrown at a synagogue in the
Swedish city of Gothenburg late on Saturday in what police said was a failed
arson attempt.
Vicious row between two leaders!
In Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told a
large rally in Istanbul he would not abandon Jerusalem to a state that
"kills children". Mr Netanyahu said the Turkish leader had
"attacked Israel". "I'm not used to receiving lectures about
morality from a leader who bombs Kurdish villages in his native Turkey, who
jails journalists, helps Iran go around international sanctions and who helps
terrorists, including in Gaza, kill innocent people," he added.
Mr Erdoğan has described Jerusalem as a "red
line" issue for Muslims and warned Turkey could end up severing diplomatic
ties with Israel over the issue. Turkey and Israel only restored diplomatic
relations last year, six years after Turkey cut ties in protest at the killing
of nine pro-Palestinian Turkish activists in clashes with Israeli commandos on
board a ship trying to break Israel's naval blockade of Gaza.
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