© Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitorSaudi attracts US attention by singing Israel's tunes - Cartoon
Israel's
News 10 said Saudi Arabia and Egypt gave US President Donald Trump the go ahead to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to the occupied city.
The channel said the Arab parties' reactions and condemnations are not genuine and are misleading.
Israeli journalist and head of the Arab desk at the news channel, Zvi Yehezkeli stressed that the announcement could not have been made without coordination between Trump and his regional allies.
"I am not sure about the Arab countries' reactions to this resolution," Yehezkeli said, adding that the responses issued so far were not serious.
On Wednesday, the US President Donald Trump
announced his decision to formally recognise Jerusalem as Israel's new capital adding that the American embassy would be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
World leaders, from Europe to the Middle East to Australia, slammed the decision as a "unilateral and outside the vision of a negotiated peace between Israelis and Palestinians," warning of "heightened tensions or even violence across the Middle East."
Comment: More confirmation that the Saudis (and apparently Egypt as well) are playing a duplicitous game regarding Palestine. Earlier this week, we learned that Saudi crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman
told Abbas in private to settle for Gaza only and leave the rest to Israel:
MBS was in high dudgeon, according to the source, as he is playing a high-stakes gamble to cement both his leadership and his corollary offensive. On this score, MBS announced that the Arab Peace Initiative (API)-a Saudi-sponsored grand bargain promising Arab recognition of and peace with Israel in return for the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza with east Jerusalem as its capital-is effectively dead.
It's time for Plan B, declared the crown prince: a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip, fattened by undetermined Egyptian transfers of land in the Sinai Peninsula. When the startled Palestinian leader asked about the place of the West Bank and East Jerusalem in this scheme, MBS replied, "We can continue to negotiate about this."
And from
another source:
Mohammed bin Salman, crown prince and the kingdom's de facto ruler, thought he could browbeat Mahmoud Abbas, the ailing Palestinian president, into acquiescence. He told Abbas either to accept the terms - no Jerusalem, no right of return - or make way for someone who will, according to multiple sources quoted by the New York Times.
Several of the officials said bin Salman had offered to sweeten the deal with direct payment to Abbas, which he refused.
Comment: More confirmation that the Saudis (and apparently Egypt as well) are playing a duplicitous game regarding Palestine. Earlier this week, we learned that Saudi crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman told Abbas in private to settle for Gaza only and leave the rest to Israel: And from another source: