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Assessing the Islamic World's Response to Trump's Jerusalem Declaration
(Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies-Bar-Ilan University) Hillel Frisch - Ominous warnings about Arab fury characterized the reactions of most Arab and Western leaders to President Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, despite Trump's clear statement that the decision in no way jeopardizes final status talks over Jerusalem between Israel and the Palestinians. While a few hundred to a few thousand demonstrated in Amman, London, Paris and New York, there were almost no protests at all in Cairo, Riyadh, and the Gulf states. Ironically, one of the capitals to see very little protest was Jerusalem, where the protestors could be counted in the dozens, even though the city is home to over 250,000 Muslims. To be sure, at the Kalandia checkpoint north of Jerusalem there were more protestors and they were far more violent. Yet the PA had encouraged violence, and one can safely assume that many of the protestors, nearly all young males, were being paid for their efforts by Fatah, the movement led by Mahmoud Abbas, president of the PA. In both cases, the demonstrations were smaller than the average protests that take place in the Jerusalem area and were far less intense than the protests in July over the Israeli decision to place metal detectors at the entrance to the Temple Mount following the killing of two Israeli border policemen. One factor limiting the violence is Israel's innovative strategy to abstain from confronting the protestors, but rather to contain them, identify them through a variety of methods, and apprehend them later. The writer, a professor of political and Middle East studies at Bar-Ilan University, is a senior research associate at its BESA Center.