US Moving Embassy To Jerusalem ‘A Declaration Of War,’ Claims Holy City’s Former Top Islamic Cleric

The former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem has claimed that if President-elect Donald Trump follows through on his pledge to move the United States embassy in Israel to Jerusalem it would constitute “a declaration of war.”

Trump pledged on the campaign trail that he would move the embassy “fairly quickly” after taking office, a move that would effectively reverse the U.S.’ long-held stance of not recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. The prospect of that plan came closer to reality last week following his nomination of David Friedman as his ambassador to Israel. Friedman followed the announcement by stating that he looked forward to taking up office “in Israel’s eternal capital, Jerusalem.”

The city has long been at the heart of one of the most fractious issues in the Israel-Palestine dispute. And, speaking at his sermon on Friday at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque, Sheikh Ikirma Sabri stressed that there would be serious consequences to Trump’s plan.

“If this promise is realized, then it means that America considers the city of Jerusalem the capital for the Jews, and therefore America has declared a new war against the people of Palestine as well as all Arabs and Muslims,” he said, reports London-based pan-Arab newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi.

The Al-Aqsa Mosque is located in Arab East Jerusalem, which was annexed by Israel by during the 1967 Middle East War. Israel regards the city as its capital, but the U.S., along with other major nations, does not recognize its annexation of East Jerusalem and thus maintain their embassies in Tel Aviv.

Palestine views Jerusalem as the future capital of its independent state. The U.S. also supports a two-state solution as a key tenet of its policy in the region. But when asked about the policy in June, Friedman, a bankruptcy lawyer who acted as a campaign adviser to Trump, suggested that the now president-elect would only do what was in the best interests of Israel.

“The answer is – not without the approval of the Israelis,” he told Israeli newspaper Haaretz. "The Israelis have to make the decision on whether or not to give up land to create a Palestinian state. If the Israelis don’t want to do it, so he doesn’t think they should do it. ... He does not think it is an American imperative for it to be an independent Palestinian state."

Friedman’s personal views go even further. He has said that those Jews who advocate for such an outcome and who oppose Israel’s occupation of the West Bank were “far worse than kapos – Jews who turned in their fellow Jews in the Nazi death camps.” Friedman has also accused President Barack Obama of “blatant anti-Semitism.”

Sabri is also no stranger to controversy. As Palestine’s top cleric in the city between 1994 and 2006, he said in 2000 that he believed the six million figure generally attributed to the number of Jews killed during the Holocaust was “exaggerated.”

Protesting Jewish actions in the region, he also said: “It's certainly not our fault if Hitler hated the Jews. ''Weren't they hated pretty much everywhere?''