Fatah vows fresh protests and shuns US VP over Jerusalem

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As Fatah confirmed its leader will refuse to meet with US Vice President Mike Pence later this month in protest at the controversial decision, the movement called on Palestinians to keep up their demonstrations over Washington's policy shift on Jerusalem.

After protests gripped the West Bank and Gaza for a third straight day, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was due in Paris on Sunday where demonstrators had rallied on the eve of his arrival.

Arab League ministers, meeting in an emergency meeting in Cairo late Saturday, meanwhile urged Washington to rescind its Jerusalem decision.

Palestinians shout during clashes with Israeli troops at a protest against US President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, near the border with Israel in the southern Gaza Strip, December 10, 2017. /Reuters Photo

President Donald Trump's decision on Wednesday to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital upended decades of American diplomacy, causing an overwhelming global diplomatic backlash.

Four Palestinians have now been killed and dozens wounded since Trump announced the new policy, which drew criticism from every other UN Security Council member at an emergency meeting on Friday.

In a statement Fatah urged Palestinians to "keep up confrontation and broaden it to all points where the Israeli army is present" in the West Bank.

Its leader – Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas – also became the latest influential Arab figure to pull out of talks with Pence who will travel to the region later this month. "There will be no meeting with the vice president of America in Palestine," Abbas's diplomatic adviser Majdi al-Khaldi told AFP. "The United States has crossed all the red lines with the Jerusalem decision."

A member of the Palestinian Fatah faction holds a gun inside the Ain el-Hilweh refugee camp near Sidon, southern Lebanon, December 6, 2017. /Reuters Photo

Fragile Fatah-Hamas reconciliation

There were fresh clashes Saturday as Palestinian protesters in the occupied West Bank hurled stones at Israeli troops who responded with tear gas, rubber bullets and live rounds. Retaliatory Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip killed two Hamas militants on Saturday while two others died near the border fence the day before.

An Israeli army statement said "violent riots have erupted at approximately 20 locations" in the West Bank and Gaza with soldiers using "riot dispersal means" that lightly injured three Palestinians.

The Palestinian Red Crescent gave a higher toll of 171 hurt in the West Bank and 60 in Gaza, with injuries ranging from gunshot wounds to tear gas inhalation and beating by security forces.

Mourners and Palestinian Hamas militants take part in the funeral of their comrade, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike, in Gaza City, December 9, 2017. /Reuters Photo

In Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, police fired stun grenades to disperse Palestinian demonstrators on the main Salahedin Street, an AFP cameraman said. An Israeli police statement said four policemen were slightly injured and 13 protesters arrested.

Washington's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital is likely to impact domestic Palestinian politics, particularly between Abbas's Fatah and Hamas, now at a key stage in a fragile reconciliation process after a decade of bitter enmity.

Hamas, which violently seized Gaza from Fatah in 2007, is due to formally hand back power on Sunday. Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum said Saturday the group "reiterated its commitment to all that has been signed and agreed upon and the completion of the handover."

Source(s): AFP