Hamas warns US over embassy relocation to Jerusalem

Monitoring Desk

GAZA CITY: Palestinian resistance group Hamas has warned against U.S. plans to relocate the its embassy to Jerusalem and recognize the city as Israel’s capital.

This “would represent a U.S. assault on the city and give legitimacy to [Israel] over the city,” Hamas said in a statement on Saturday.

U.S. media on Wednesday said President Donald Trump was planning to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Hamas said such a U.S. move “would give a cover to Israel to pursue the judaization of Jerusalem and expulsion of the Palestinians from the city”, going on to call on Arab and Islamic nations to work to halt the expected U.S. decision.

During his election, Trump promised to relocate the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Jerusalem remains at the core of the perennial Israel-Palestine conflict, as Palestinians want Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state.

Meanwhile, Clashes erupted in the occupied West Bank between Israeli troops and Palestinians after thousands of the latter performed Friday prayers in an area where a Palestinian man was shot dead one day earlier by a Jewish settler.

On Thursday, a 48-year-old Palestinian man was killed by a Jewish settler near the northern West Bank city of Nablus, according to Palestinian officials.

“Mahmoud Ouda was shot in the chest while working his land in the village of Kasra near Nablus,” Ghassan Daghlas, a Palestinian official in charge of settlement affairs, told Anadolu Agency late Thursday.

“He was immediately rushed to a Nablus hospital, where he was soon pronounced dead,” Daghlas said, adding that the Israeli army was still holding the body of the slain man.

The following day, thousands of Palestinians performed Friday prayers on a tract of agricultural land on which Ouda was killed.

A large contingent of Israeli soldiers arrived in the area shortly afterward and dispersed Palestinian worshippers with copious amounts of teargas.

No injuries have been reported.