Lebanese Speaker Urges Closure of Muslim Nations’ Embassies in US
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Speaker of Lebanon’s Parliament Nabih Berri suggested that Islamic countries should shut their embassies in Washington in protests at the US plans to relocate its embassy to al-Quds (Jerusalem).
In an address to the 6th International Conference on Palestinian Intifada in Tehran on Tuesday, Berri strongly criticized the US government for backing the Tel Aviv regime’s policies, including the expansion of settler homes in Palestine.
He also slammed Washington’s plans to move its embassy to al-Quds as a scheme to disrupt peace, proposing that all Muslim countries, in response to the US plot, should close their embassies in Washington, DC.
Based on a unanimous international consensus regarding the status of al-Quds, no international diplomatic mission to the Israeli regime is currently located in the city, and almost all are in Tel Aviv.
This has always been true of the US and others, although 24 countries did once have embassies in or near West Jerusalem. However, after Israel’s unrecognized annexation of this occupied territory, in violation, as the UN Security Council has repeatedly pointed out, of “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war,” these missions were eventually all relocated.
Now, the White House has confirmed that US President Donald Trump's team is in the "beginning stages" of discussing a plan to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Such possible relocation that has drawn widespread condemnation will be taking the lead in abrogating an international consensus that has held for almost 70 years.
