Less than a week after Trump’s announcement, predictions that it will inevitably lead to greater violence appear to be coming true as Israel clamps down on protesters taking to the streets. By Sunday night, over 800 Palestinians were injured, and four killed, in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, as well as the Gaza Strip, which has come under renewed bombing.  It will likely get worse. Looking beyond the immediate moment, we have every reason to fear the accelerating ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Jerusalem, where Israel is intent on establishing a 70% Jewish majority by 2020 (PDF).

In the meantime, most analysts agree that Trump has sounded the death-knell of the two-state solution.  Palestinian think-tank Al-Shabaka executive director Nadia Hijab described the announcement as a nuclear bomb.  Lawyer and scholar Noura Erakat went so far as to thank Trump for revealing to the world that the peace process was little more than a fig leaf, and that the emperor is naked. In my own “morning after” thoughts, I compared Trump’s declaration to Lord Arthur Balfour’s, a full century ago. This comparison was meant to reveal the imperial hubris behind the US president’s proclamation.  In December 2017, just as in November 1917, there is only one country, from the river to the sea.  And in December 2017, just as in November 1917, the Palestinian people are playing havoc with imperial designs.

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