Ramallah // Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas has written to US President-elect Donald Trump urging him not to move the American embassy to Jerusalem.
The Palestinian news agency Wafa did not say when the letter was sent but said it aimed to explain the “risks” of moving the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Mr Abbas warned the move would have a “disastrous effect on the peace process, on the two-state solution and on the stability and security of the entire region,” Wafa said.
Trump has said he plans to relocate the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in a controversial move bitterly opposed by Palestinians as a unilateral action while the status of the city remains contested.
Israel supports the move and has encouraged previous presidents to take similar steps to no avail.
Mr Abbas also sent letters to other world powers including Russia, China and the European Union, calling on them to “spare no effort” to prevent the United States from making the move, Wafa said.
The Palestinians regard Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem as the capital of their future state, while Israel proclaims the entire city as its undivided capital.
The United States and most UN member states do not recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Trump spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway last month told a US radio channel moving the embassy was a “very big priority” for the president-elect.
Meanwhile, Israeli police stepped up security measures in Arab neighbourhoods in east Jerusalem on Monday, searching vehicles and arresting relatives of the Palestinian truck driver who rammed his vehicle into a crowd of Israeli soldiers the previous day, killing four of them and injuring 17 others.
Nine people were arrested, five of them relatives of 28-year-old Fadi Qunbar, the attacker. All arrested were from the Jabel Mukaber neighbourhood of east Jerusalem where Qunbar lived, police said.
Mohammed Qunbar, the attacker’s cousin, said Fadi lived a normal life but carried out the attack as a result of Palestinian anger over what is seen as Israeli encroachment at Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa Mosque.
He added: “We were shocked, for sure. We never expected anything like this from Fadi.”
Hundreds of Israelis attended the funerals for the four soldiers killed in the attack, which prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggested was inspired by ISIL — a claim widely dismissed.
*Associated Press and Agence France-Presse
