Fatah calls for protests against Pence's Jerusalem visit

RAMALLAH: The Fatah faction of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday called for demonstrations next week when US Vice President Mike Pence visits Jerusalem, after Washington’s policy shift on the holy city.
Breaking with decades with US policy, President Donald Trump announced on Dec. 6 his decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and that he would move the US Embassy to the city.
The move has stirred global condemnation and sparked angry protests across Arab and Muslim countries, as well as deadly clashes in the occupied territories between Palestinians and Israeli forces.
It also prompted Abbas to cancel a meeting with Pence, who arrives Wednesday in Jerusalem, and warn that Washington no longer had a role to play in the Palestinian-Israeli peace process.
Fatah called for a day of “protests” on Wednesday near Jerusalem and the Old City “against the visit of the American vice president and Trump’s decision” to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, a statement said.
The status of Jerusalem is one of the most controversial issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Israel seized control of the eastern part of the city in the 1967 Middle East war and sees the whole of Jerusalem as its undivided capital. The Palestinians view the east as the capital of their future state.
The call to protest came as thousands of Palestinians took part in funerals for two of four men killed Friday in clashes with Israeli forces during protests in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip.
Mourners chanted anti-Trump slogans and masked men fired into the air during one of the ceremonies in the village of Beit Ula, located between Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank.
Funerals were also held for the two other Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza, where the enclave’s Hamas rulers had on Friday called for a “day of rage.”
Meanwhile, Egypt opened its largely sealed border with Gaza on Saturday for only the second time since the Palestinian Authority took control of the crossing from Hamas.
The Hamas-run Interior Ministry, which was organizing departures from the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Yunis, said the crossing would stay open for four days but, in the Egypt direction, for humanitarian cases only.
Those include people needing medical treatment unavailable in Gaza as well as students enrolled at Egyptian universities and Gazans with jobs abroad.
There were tearful scenes at the makeshift departure point as families said their farewells.
Rafah is Gaza’s only border crossing not controlled by Israel.
Hamas handed control of the Gaza side to the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority on Nov. 1 as the first part of an Egyptian-brokered reconciliation deal designed to end a bitter decade-long split.
That was supposed to have been followed by the handover of full civil control in Gaza by Dec. 1.
But the target date was missed amid differences over the future of tens of thousands of civil servants recruited by Hamas since it seized control of the territory in 2007.
Egypt opened the border for three days last month — the first time it had done so since the reconciliation deal.
Prior to that, the crossing had been open for just 14 days this year, according to the Hamas-run Interior Ministry.
Up to 20,000 Gazans have applied to enter Egypt, far more than are able to cross during the brief openings.
Some 200 people passed through on Saturday morning, 10 of them medical cases, the ministry said.
Both Israel and Egypt have maintained blockades of Gaza for years, arguing that they are necessary to isolate Hamas.