Breaking:Donald Trump officially recognise Jeruselem as the capital of Isreal + controversies it has generated.

Donald Trump recognised Jerusalemas Israel's capital today, a move which would upend decades of US policy and risk potentially violent protests.

Despite warnings from Arab, Muslim and Western allies, the US President instructed the State Department to begin the process of moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to the holy city.

Mr Trump said ahead of the announcement that his decision on Jerusalem was "long overdue" step to advance the peace process.

"I have determined that it is time to officially recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel," he said. "While previous presidents have made this a major campaign promise, they failed to deliver. Today, I am delivering."

Mr Trump acted under a 1995 law that requires the United States to move its embassy to Jerusalem. His predecessors, Bill Clinton, George W Bush and Barack Obama, had consistently put off that decision to avoid inflaming tensions in the Middle East.

 

A Palestinian envoy said Mr Trump's decision was a declaration of war in the Middle East while Pope Francis called for Jerusalem's status quo to be respected, saying new tension would further inflame world conflicts.

China and Russia expressed concern that the plans could aggravate Middle East hostilities. The United States has never endorsed the Israel's claim of sovereignty over any part of Jerusalem and has insisted its status be resolved through Israeli-Palestinian negotiation. 

Protests have broken out in areas of Jordan's capital Ammaninhabited by Palestinian refugees in response to Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, witnesses have told Reuters.
 

Youths chanted anti-American slogans in Amman, while in the Baqaa refugee camp on the city's outskirts, hundreds of youths roamed the streets denouncing Trump and calling on Jordan's government to scrap its 1994 peace treaty with Israel. "Down with America.. America is the mother of terror," they chanted.

Germany does not support the Trump administration's decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday.

"The German government does not support this position, because the status of Jerusalem is to be resolved in the framework of a two-state solution," she was quoted as saying in a tweet by the government spokesman.

Jordan rejected on Wednesday the US decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel saying it was "legally null" because it consolidated Israel's occupation of the eastern sector of the contested city in the 1967 war.
 

Meanwhile, the Syrian president's office said the Palestinian cause will stay alive among Arabs until the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.

"The future of Jerusalem is not determined by a state or a president but is determined by its history and by the will and determination in the Palestinian cause," President Bashar al-Assad's office said on an official social media feed. 

Adding to threats of protest coming in from around the region, Tunisia's powerful labour union UGTT has said Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital and decision to move the US embassy to the city was a declaration of war.

"We call...for mass protests," the labour union said in a statement.

Tunisia's foreign ministry said in a separate statement Trump's move "seriously threatens to undermine the foundations of the (Israeli-Palestinian) peace process".

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has given a televised reaction to Donald Trump's announcement.

 

He said Jerusalem remains the "eternal capital of the state of Palestine" and said the decision to recognise the holy city as Israel's capital was tantamount to the US abdicating its peace mediator role.

Iran "seriously condemns" Mr Trump's decision, the Islamic Republic said Wednesday in a statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs carried by state media.

The move by the US violates international resolutions, the statement said.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said earlier in the day that the United States is trying to destabilise the region and start a war to protect Israel's security. 

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is getting hit from all sides as US allies deplore Donald Trump's move to declare Jerusalem the capital of Israel, reports the Associated Press.

So far, not a single country other than Israel has thrown its support behind the declaration. Even the State Department concedes it could sow unrest throughout the Middle East. 

Mr Tillerson increasingly finds himself standing by himself these days as he explains his boss on the world stage. Defending Mr Trump's foreign policy approach, Mr Tillerson often says that "America first is not America alone".

There are few signs that foreign nations are buying it. In Belgium this week, Mr Tillerson got earful after earful about Mr Trump's hampering of the Iran nuclear deal, withdrawal from the Paris climate accord and disdain for the United Nations. 

More on the reaction from Hamas.

Reuters is reporting that the Palestinian Islamist group has called for Arabs and Muslims to "undermine" the US in the region and shun Israel after the historic decision by Mr Trump.

"Trump's decision on Jerusalem will not succeed in changing the fact that Jerusalem is an Arab Muslim land," a spokesperson for the militant group running Gaza said. 

 

The group has also repeatedly called for a Palestinian "day of rage" on 8 December as well. 

The spokesperson said that "this decision is foolish and time will prove a that the biggest losers [from it] are" Mr Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.