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US Embassy celebration kicks off

Published:Sunday | May 13, 2018 | 12:00 AM
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Ariel Schalit
Security personnel stand guard as riders from the Samson Riders, an Israeli motorcycle club arrive to the new US Embassy on a group ride from the old embassy in Tel Aviv, ahead of the official opening in Jerusalem on Sunday, May 13. On Monday, the United States moves its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the holy city at the explosive core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and claimed by both sides as a capital.
AP
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas
Bernat Armangue
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
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JERUSALEM (AP) :

Israel on Sunday kicked off festivities to celebrate the opening of the new US Embassy in Jerusalem, even as it bolstered its forces along the Gaza border and in the West Bank in anticipation of mass Palestinian protests of the move.

A day before the embassy's formal opening, Israel hosted a gala party at its foreign ministry with President Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka, her husband, Jared Kushner, and other American VIPs.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised Trump's "bold decision" in upending decades of US policy by recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital. "It's the right thing to do," a smiling Netanyahu told the jubilant crowd.

Trump announced his decision on Jerusalem in December, triggering a joyous reaction from Netanyahu's nationalist govern-ment. The move infuriated the Palestinians, who claim Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem as their capital.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas halted ties with the Trump administration and declared it unfit to remain in its role as the sole mediator in peace talks.

The rival Hamas movement, which controls the Gaza Strip, has been staging a series of weekly demonstrations against a crippling Israeli-Egyptian blockade of the territory. Those protests are to climax today, with tens of thousands of people expected to gather along the Israeli border in an event timed to coincide with the US Embassy move.

Hamas has signalled that large crowds, numbering perhaps in the thousands, might try to break through the border fence to realise the "right of return" to lost homes.

Both the embassy move and the protests have symbolic timing. Trump has said the opening is meant to coincide with the 70th anniversary of Israel's establishment. The Palestinian protests also mark the date as the anniversary of their "naqba," or catastrophe, when hundreds of thousands of people fled or were forced from their homes during the war surrounding the event. About two-thirds of Gaza's two million people are descendants of Palestinian refugees.

A mass border breach could trigger potentially lethal Israeli force. Forty-two Palestinians have been killed and over 1,800 have been wounded by Israeli fire since the weekly protests began on March 30. The UN, European Union and rights groups have accused Israel of using excessive force against unarmed protesters.

Israel says it is protecting a sovereign border and accuses Hamas of using the unrest to plan and carry out attacks.