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World reacts as US prepares for deeply controversial embassy move to Jerusalem

Palestinian demonstrators burn tires near the Gaza-Israel border, east of Gaza City, as Palestinians readied for protests over the inauguration of the US embassy following its controversial move to Jerusalem (Mahmud Hams/AFP)
Updated 14 May 2018
AP
AFP & Reuters
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World reacts as US prepares for deeply controversial embassy move to Jerusalem

  • US President Donald Trump is not thought to be attending the opening of the new embassy building
  • Hundreds of police will be on duty around the embassy during the ceremony
Updated 14 May 2018
AP AFP & Reuters

DUBAI: The United States moves its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem on Monday after months of global outcry, Palestinian anger and exuberant praise from Israelis over President Donald Trump's decision tossing aside decades of precedent.
While a White House delegation and Israeli officials gather for the inauguration ceremony Monday afternoon, Palestinians are expected to protest in large numbers near the Gaza border with Israel and perhaps elsewhere.
Hundreds were already beginning to gather in Gaza on Monday morning and preparations were being made. Piles of tyres were being delivered to the border to be set alight and buses were shuttling demonstrators from cities to the border area.
There are concerns the Gaza protests less than 100 kilometres (60 miles) away will turn deadly if Palestinians attempt to damage or cross the fence with Israeli snipers positioned on the other side.
The inauguration that follows Trump’s Dec. 6 recognition of the disputed city as Israel's capital also comes at a time of heightened regional tensions.
It follows Trump’s announcement last week that the United States was withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal and Israeli strikes two days later on dozens of Iranian targets in Syria.
Those strikes came after rocket fire toward Israeli forces in the occupied Golan Heights that Israel blamed on Iran.
The Trump administration has vowed to restart the moribund Middle East peace process but the embassy move has inflamed feelings.

International reaction

The US’ decision to move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem has been met with widespread criticism.

In the UAE two prominent newspapers slammed the decision. The English-language Gulf News called Monday “a sad day” in a front-page headline over a cartoon by the slain Palestinian cartoonist Naji al-Ali of a crying Palestinian woman behind barbed wire. Al-Ali, a critic of both Israeli and Arab governments, was fatally shot in London in 1987.

And in an editorial, Gulf News said: “This is a day when the United States and the administration of President Donald Trump should hang its head in shame.”

It called Trump's decision "a purely political move to appease his friends on the Manhattan party circuit" and said "Jerusalem's status is non-negotiable."

And The National, an English-language newspaper based in Abu Dhabi, the editor-in-chief Mina al-Oraibi wrote: “Rather than ignoring history and historic rights, courage and immediate intervention is needed to save the heart of the Arab world.”

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the US had disregarded “rights and justice,” ignoring the international community.

Erdogan said the move served to “reward” the Israeli government despite it undermining efforts to resolve the decades-long conflict, while it “punished” Palestinians.

“History and humanity will never forgive the injustices done to our Palestinian brothers,” Erdogan said.

Meanwhile Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah dismissed the US decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem as a “worthless” unilateral step.

On Sunday, Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri released a new message saying America's decision was evidence that "appeasement" has failed Palestinians, as he urged Muslims to carry out jihad against the United States, according to a transcript provided by the SITE monitoring agency.
Monday's inauguration ceremony at 4:00 pm (1300 GMT) will include some 800 guests – though not Trump himself – at what until now had been a US consulate building in Jerusalem.
US Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan will lead the Washington delegation that includes Trump's daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner, both White House aides, as well as Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

Tight security at opening
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has repeatedly called Trump’s decision “historic,” welcomed them at a reception on Sunday.
“Jerusalem has been the capital of the Jewish people for the past 3,000 years,” he said.
“It’s been the capital of our state for the past 70 years. It will remain our capital for all time.”
Sullivan called the embassy “a long overdue recognition of reality.”
Saeb Erekat, Palestine Liberation Organisation secretary-general, called it a “hostile act against international law.”
It “places the US on the side of the occupying power, Israel, which continues to oppress the Palestinian people and to colonize their lands towards destroying the very possibility of reaching a just, comprehensive and lasting peace,” he said in a statement.
Police and the Israeli military planned major security deployments.
Around 1,000 police officers will be positioned around the embassy for the inauguration, said spokesman Micky Rosenfeld.
Israel's army said it would almost double the number of troops surrounding Gaza and in the occupied West Bank.
It also dropped leaflets warning Gazans to stay away from the fence, including one with a photo of the Champs-Elysees boulevard in Paris and the caption: "Gaza 2025? The choice is in your hands."
Israelis began celebrating on Sunday, as tens of thousands of marched in Jerusalem, some holding American flags, to mark Jerusalem Day.
The annual event is an Israeli celebration of the "reunification" of the city following the 1967 Six-Day War.
Israel occupied the West Bank and east Jerusalem in 1967 and later annexed east Jerusalem in a move never recognised by the international community.
Beyond the disputed nature of Jerusalem, the date of the embassy move is also key.
May 14 marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of Israel.
The following day, Palestinians mark the "Nakba", or catastrophe, commemorating the more than 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes in the 1948 war surrounding Israel's creation.
Palestinian protests are planned on both days.

Protests ongoing
There have already been weeks of protests and clashes along the Gaza border, with 54 Palestinians killed by Israeli fire there since March 30.
No Israelis have been wounded and the military has faced criticism over the use of live fire.
Israel says it only opens fire when necessary to stop infiltrations, attacks and damage to the border fence, while accusing Hamas, the Islamist movement that runs the blockaded Gaza Strip, of seeking to use the protests as cover to carry out violence
Jerusalem's status is perhaps the thorniest issue in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Israel considers the entire city its capital, while the Palestinians see east Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.
In the decades since 1967, international consensus has been that the city's status must be negotiated between the two sides, but Trump broke with that to global outrage.
He has argued that it helps make peace possible by taking Jerusalem "off the table", but many have pointed out he has not announced any concessions in return from Israel.
Trump's initial decision led to a series of protests in various Middle Eastern and Muslim countries.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Sunday insisted the US was "hard at work" on the peace process, which he declared was "most decidedly not dead".

Topics: Israel Jerusalem UAE Lebanon Al Qaeda Turkey Nakba 70 Years on

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Beirut’s Commodore Hotel, a haven for journalists during Lebanon’s civil war, shuts down

Updated 13 sec ago
AP
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Beirut’s Commodore Hotel, a haven for journalists during Lebanon’s civil war, shuts down

  • The hotel, located in Beirut’s Hamra district, shut down over the weekend
  • Officials have not commented on the decision
Updated 13 sec ago
AP

BEIRUT: During Lebanon’s civil war, the Commodore Hotel in western Beirut’s Hamra district became iconic among the foreign press corps.
For many, it served as an unofficial newsroom where they could file dispatches even when communications systems were down elsewhere. Armed guards at the door provided some sense of protection as sniper fights and shelling were turning the cosmopolitan city to rubble.
The hotel even had its own much-loved mascot: a cheeky parrot at the bar.
The Commodore endured for decades after the 15-year civil war ended in 1990 — until this week, when it closed for good.
The main gate of the nine-story hotel with more than 200 rooms was shuttered Monday. Officials at the Commodore refused to speak to the media about the decision to close.
Although the country’s economy is beginning to recover from a protracted financial crisis that began in 2019, tensions in the region and the aftermath of the Israel-Hezbollah war that was halted by a tenuous ceasefire in November 2024 are keeping many tourists away. Lengthy daily electricity cuts force businesses to rely on expensive private generators.
The Commodore is not the first of the crisis-battered country’s once-bustling hotels to shut down in recent years.
But for journalists who lived, worked and filed their dispatches there, its demise hits particularly hard.
“The Commodore was a hub of information — various guerrilla leaders, diplomats, spies and of course scores of journalists circled the bars, cafes and lounges,” said Tim Llewellyn, a former BBC Middle East correspondent who covered the civil war. “On one occasion (late Palestinian leader) Yasser Arafat himself dropped in to sip coffee with” with the hotel manager’s father, he recalled.
A line to the outside world
At the height of the civil war, when telecommunications were dysfunctional and much of Beirut was cut off from the outside world, it was at the Commodore where journalists found land lines and Telex machines that always worked to send reports to their media organizations around the globe.
Across the front office desk in the wide lobby of the Commodore, there were two teleprinters that carried reports of The Associated Press and Reuters news agencies.
“The Commodore had a certain seedy charm. The rooms were basic, the mattresses lumpy and the meal fare wasn’t spectacular,” said Robert H. Reid, the AP’s former Middle East regional editor, who was among the AP journalists who covered the war. The hotel was across the street from the international agency’s Middle East head office at the time.
“The friendly staff and the camaraderie among the journalist-guests made the Commodore seem more like a social club where you could unwind after a day in one of the world’s most dangerous cities,” Reid said.
Llewellyn remembers that the hotel manager at the time, Yusuf Nazzal, told him in the late 1970s “that it was I who had given him the idea” to open such a hotel in a war zone.
Llewellyn said that during a long chat with Nazzal on a near-empty Middle East Airlines Jumbo flight from London to Beirut in the fall of 1975, he told him that there should be a hotel that would make sure journalists had good communications, “a street-wise and well-connected staff running the desks, the phones, the teletypes.”
During Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon and a nearly three-month siege of West Beirut by Israeli troops, journalists used the roof of the hotel to film fighter jets striking the city.
The parrot at the bar
One of the best-known characters at the Commodore was Coco the parrot, who was always in a cage near the bar. Patrons were often startled by what they thought was the whiz of an incoming shell, only to discover that it was Coco who made the sound.
AP’s chief Middle East correspondent Terry Anderson was a regular at the hotel before he was kidnapped in Beirut in 1985 and held for seven years, becoming one of the longest-held American hostages in history.
Videos of Anderson released by his kidnappers later showed him wearing a white T-shirt with the words “Hotel Commodore Lebanon.”
With the kidnapping of Anderson and other Western journalists, many foreign media workers left the predominantly-Muslim western part of Beirut, and after that the hotel lost its status as a safe haven for foreign journalists.
Ahmad Shbaro, who worked at different departments of the hotel until 1988, said the main reason behind the Commodore’s success was the presence of armed guards that made journalists feel secure in the middle of Beirut’s chaos as well as functioning telecommunications.
He added that the hotel also offered financial facilities for journalists who ran out of money. They would borrow money from Nazzal and their companies could pay him back by depositing money in his bank account in London.
Shbaro remembers a terrifying day in the late 1970s when the area of the hotel was heavily shelled and two rooms at the Commodore were hit.
“The hotel was full and all of us, staffers and journalists, spent the night at Le Casbah,” a famous nightclub in the basement of the building, he said.
In quieter times, journalists used to spend the night partying by the pool.
“It was a lifeline for the international media in West Beirut, where journalists filed, ate, drank, slept, and hid from air raids, shelling, and other violence,” said former AP correspondent Scheherezade Faramarzi. “It gained both fame and notoriety,” she said, speaking from the Mediterranean island of Cyprus.
The hotel was built in 1943 and kept functioning until 1987 when it was heavily damaged in fighting between Shiite and Druze militiamen at the time. The old Commodore building was later demolished and a new structure was build with an annex and officially opened again for the public in 1996.
But Coco the parrot was no longer at the bar. The bird went missing during the 1987 fighting. Shbaro said it is believed he was taken by one of the gunmen who stormed the hotel.

Topics: Lebanon Beirut

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