World Leaders React to the Jerusalem Decision

Matthew RJ Brodsky joins Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Nina Larsen on i24News "Crossroads with David Shuster and Shayna Estulin" to discuss the reaction from world leaders to President Trump's Jerusalem announcement. They explore what appeared to either be confusion over its meaning at the State Department or an attempt to push back against the president's initiative. Brodsky sheds light on the difficulty explaining the complex Jerusalem issue to audiences on TV news programs in a thee minute segment -- something he doesn't believe the State Department is able to lay out effectively.

He believes most world leaders don't truly understand what the issue is about or get the nuances of Trump's simple statement. Nevertheless, the Palestinian leadership and those in the wider Arab and Muslim worlds understand the difference between western Jerusalem from 1949 until today, versus the divided, annexed, and expanded Jerusalem under Jordan from 1949 until 1967, versus the 1993 enlarged Jerusalem municipality.

Israeli negotiators at Camp David in 2000 admitted that even at that time they, as the Israeli delegation under PM Ehud Barak, had not adequately identified what they considered to be Jerusalem. What Palestinians are actually saying is that Israel has no right to the 15 square miles of West Jerusalem that Israel has held since before 1948 until today. That means the debate isn't about borders and territory from 1967. It is about Israel's existence in any configuration, which continues to be the crux of the matter.