Guatemala opens Jerusalem embassy, two days after the US

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Guatemala opened an embassy in Jerusalem on Wednesday, two days after the United States inaugurated its new site in the contested city in a move that infuriated Palestinians and drew international condemnation.

Israeli troops shot dead dozens of Palestinian protesters on the Gaza-Israel border on Monday when the high-profile opening of the US Embassy to Israel in Jerusalem raised tensions to boiling point after weeks of anti-Israeli demonstrations.

Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attended the embassy’s opening on Wednesday in an office complex in west Jerusalem.

Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales, his wife Hilda Patricia Marroquin, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara, and Guatemalan Foreign Minister Sandra Jovel Polanco pose for a photo ahead of the dedication ceremony of the embassy of Guatemala in Jerusalem, May 16, 2018. /VCG Photo

“It’s not a coincidence that Guatemala is opening its embassy in Jerusalem right among the first. You were always among the first. You were the second country to recognize Israel,” Netanyahu said at the ceremony, referring to its founding in 1948.

Guatemala was one of only a few nations that backed Trump’s decision in December to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and it is only the second country to move its embassy to the holy city. Paraguay has said it will move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem by the end of May.

Trump’s move reversed decades of US policy, upsetting the Arab world and Western allies.

The status of Jerusalem is one of the thorniest obstacles to forging a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, who with broad international backing want East Jerusalem, captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war, as their capital.

Israel regards all of the city, including the eastern sector it annexed after the 1967 conflict, as its capital. The Trump administration has said the city’s final borders should be decided by the parties.

The international community does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over the entire city and says its final status should be set in peace negotiations.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attended the embassy’s opening on Wednesday. /Reuters Photo

On the day the United States inaugurated its embassy in Jerusalem, Israeli armed forces killed 60 Palestinians during the Gaza border protests. It was the bloodiest day since their 2014 war.

Palestinian leaders said by relocating the embassy, the United States had created incitement and instability in the region and abrogated its role as a peace mediator.

More: Turkey tells Israeli ambassador to temporarily leave

Palestinians have been demonstrating on the Gaza frontier for the past six weeks, demanding a return to family land or homes lost to Israel when it was founded in 1948.

On Wednesday, a day after expelling Israel’s ambassador in response to the Gaza deaths, Turkey ordered the Israeli consul general in Istanbul to return home.

Prior to 1980, Guatemala and a dozen other countries maintained embassies in Jerusalem. Israel’s passage in June 1980 of a law proclaiming Jerusalem its “indivisible and eternal capital” led to a UN Security Council resolution calling on Guatemala and several other countries to move their embassies to Tel Aviv.

Source(s): Reuters