The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has praised the Bahraini government for breaking ranks with the position espoused by Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority (PA) to isolate the United States over President Trump’s announcement earlier this month recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
The PA led the support for a United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) vote to condemn the American recognition as null and void –– an absurdity, since President Trump’s declaration did not violate any international law. UNGA resolutions carry no legal force, but a large vote in favor brings the PA a diplomatic victory of sorts.
However, the Persian Gulf state of Bahrain has parted company from the Palestinian strategy of opposing and isolating the US, the Bahraini Foreign Minister, Khaled bin Ahmed al-Khalifa, tweeting: “It’s not helpful to pick a fight with the US over side issues while we together fight the clear and present danger of the Theo-Fascist Islamic Republic.”
ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “We applaud the Bahraini declaration, which rightly focuses on the tremendous, existential threat posed in the region by an Iran seeking to obtain nuclear weapons. And, this declaration serves as an admission that major efforts are being made on behalf of a predictable and outrageous Mahmoud Abbas to censure the US for merely acknowledging, at long last, what is merely a fact –– that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and that not saying so, in deference to Palestinian Arab and wider Arab opinion, has not and will not produce peace or moderation.
“As the ZOA argued in January in a New York Daily News op-ed advocating the move on Jerusalem, which President Trump took this month, important, indeed, vital common interests, such as preventing Iran going nuclear, unite Israel and a number of Sunni Arab states. Regional relations will not, therefore, be imperiled by President Trump’s declaration.
“Whatever the current disturbances and the hue and cry, much of it orchestrated, on the Arab street against President Trump, his Jerusalem move is ultimately a service to truth and even to peace-making, as it serves to notice the world that its nations will not forever support this fiction that Jerusalem is apart from Israel, a lie which the PA seeks to foist upon it.”