‘Decision on Jerusalem damages US credibility as peace sponsor’

Beirut, Dec 7 (IANS) Lebanon's President Michel Aoun said on Wednesday that US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital is "dangerous" and hurts the country's credibility as a peace sponsor.

Aoun said that "this decision reversed the peace process between the Palestinians and the Israelis for decades and killed every attempt that has been made to bring the points of view closer," Xinhua quoted a statement as saying.

He warned that that the US decision "could cause reaction that threatens the stability of the region and perhaps the whole world."

Aoun called on Arab states to take "a unified stance to bring back the Arabic identity of Jerusalem and to restore the international resolutions and the Arab peace initiative as the only way to achieve a just and comprehensive peace that restores the rights to their owners."

For his part, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri stressed that Lebanon "refuses the Judaisation of Jerusalem and the American decision."

Hariri met at his residence with a Hamas delegation, which delivered a letter from Hamas' political leader Ismail Haniyeh.

Ali Baraka, the Hamas movement's representative in Lebanon, and Ziad Hassan, head of Hamas' political relations, attended the meeting.

Hariri said that Lebanon will take diplomatic and political measures with the Arab and Islamic states as well as the international community "to support the cause, the Arabism of Jerusalem and the refusal of the biased American decision."

Baraka said Hamas regards the US decision on Jerusalem as "an aggression not only against the Palestinian people, but also against the Arab and Palestinian nation and against the Muslim and Christian sacred sites."

"This American decision reflects the US bias towards the Zionist entity and will put the region in a new phase of struggle of which no one knows the extent," he said.

He added that Hamas calls for an Arab and Islamic unified stance to confront this American stance and to defend Jerusalem and the Palestinian cause, "which is the central cause of the Arab and Islamic nation."