Welcome to Jerusalem! At the northern end of the city, behind the Israeli guard towers and barbed wire, behind the cars which are clustered at the crossing point towards the Palestinian territories of Kalandia, we can see a derelict industrial zone, a factory for the separation of rubbish and an abandoned airport… In this end-of-the-world setting, Donald Trump's “vision” for an Israeli-Palestinian “peace” defined, most seriously in the world, a “special tourist area” reserved for the future capital of Palestine. It’s seeing far.
Confetti capital, rump capital or dumping ground … The Trump administration, which recognized Israeli sovereignty over all of Jerusalem, Tuesday, January 28, conceded to the Palestinian Authority a sovereignty reduced like skin of sorrow on the far eastern periphery of the city. It intends to reject most of the future Palestinian capital behind the separation wall. It maintains control of the Israeli security forces at the holy places. It amputated in passing the city from a part of its Arab population, which soon threatened to supplant the Jewish majority.
Welcome to Jerusalem, second step: the Parliament of Palestine. A legacy of the 1993 Oslo Accords, this building is perched on the hill of Abu Dis, to the east, behind hills of grassy earth, where limestone is exposed. Never completed, the modernist structure lined with yellow stone, with gaping openings, is today a refuge for pigeons.
Below, the mayor of Al-Aizaria, Issam Faroun, unfolds the newspaper and a map, which he has been studying since Tuesday. His city, the Bethany of the Bible, is located in the middle of a future state of Palestine. The old road to Jericho crosses it: the main axis of communication that links the territories of the North and the South. "It’s a bottleneck", he sighs. Since 1977, the neighboring Israeli settlement of Maalé Adoumim has nibbled its territory to the east.
A huge Israeli red sign borders the road that links Al-Aizaria and Maalé Adoumim, signaling entry into a high-risk area. If Israel ends up annexing the territories it has occupied in the West Bank since the 1967 war, as the American "vision" allows, white and red flags of the settlers of Maalé Adoumim would be the first to join the Israeli territory. Since the weekend of 1st and February 2, the government said it could do it city by city.
