JERUSALEM has great religious importance for Islam, Christianity and Judaism. Nearly 70 years after the British carved the state of Israel out of Palestinian land, today’s sole superpower decided to cock a snook at the world and its opinion by US unilaterally recognising occupied Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Flashback to 636 AD. Muslim general Khalid bin Waleed had defeated the Byzantine Empire in the battle of Yarmuk, utterly routing the forces of Emperor Heraclius. In 637 the Patriarch of Jerusalem insisted that he would surrender the city only to the Caliph himself, none other than Omar Farooq.

Caliph Omar rode north and in 638 reached Jerusalem which he entered wearing not the armour of a conqueror but the white linen of a pilgrim.

The rest is all history. Except for the Crusade interlude, Jerusalem remained under Muslim control till the Zionist entity captured it in 1967.

Asif Jah
Karachi

(2)

There will be innumerable consequences of America’s decision to accept Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. It is a blow to the two-state solution.

President Donald Trump decision has created a turmoil in the Muslim world and forced it to come to the conclusion that this is the end of the two-state solution. At the same time it also scuttles the American position as mediator between Israel and Palestine.

In the days to come the decision ignited fierce anti-American feelings in every nook and corner of the world.

Arsalan Nawaz
Karachi

(3)

THE Oslo accord was to deny Palestine diplomatically the status of a sovereign state.

That agreement restrained the Paletinians from having an army, which is a must for a sovereign state.

President Trump’s latest act has explicitly torpedoed the two-state solution.

Syeda Mahnoor Tariq
Karachi

Published in Dawn, December 13th, 2017