Donald Trump has shown in his short time as president that he will take any opportunity to go against what his predecessors have done, regardless of whether it might improve the situation. His unilateral decisions on healthcare, taxation, immigration, and now the Middle East (Anger as Trump declares Jerusalem Israel’s capital, 7 December), have been taken without informed advice or any understanding of the likely consequences. To say, as Trump does, that recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is furthering the peace process is as divorced from sane thinking as saying that pouring petrol on a smouldering fire will put it out. Fortunately, the countries that agree with his action can be counted on the thumb of one small hand. He faces unanimous condemnation from statesmen and politicians who, unlike him, know more of the Middle East than the inside of the gold-plated palaces of Saudi billionaires.

Perhaps his action, which legitimises the illegal theft of Palestinian land by the Israelis, will give the kiss of death to the so-called two-state solution and encourage those countries – most of the world – that are shocked by America’s abandonment of even the appearance of balance, to support moves towards one single state of all its inhabitants between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. The only people who would suffer in such a state would be parties and politicians like Netanyahu who thrive on the racist concept that Palestinians and Jews can never live together in peace. In fact, they did exactly that for hundreds of years until Britain encouraged the influx of hundreds of thousands of European Jews who had no interest in sharing the land with its indigenous Arab inhabitants.

Karl Sabbagh

Author, Palestine: A Personal History

• Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and start the move to relocate the US embassy goes against every UN resolution and the beliefs of every European state as well as the Arab countries he has been trying to cultivate this last six months or more. Personally I feel angry at the wilful support of a regime which, if it wasn’t Israel, would be condemned as a rogue state. This one-sided decision will release a pent-up fury, where Britain has a lot to answer for – we held the mandate and promised the Palestinians their rights, but abandoned them.

To assuage the fury, the least the UK could do is immediately recognise the state of Palestine based on the 1967 borders. After the Liberal Democrats changed their policy at the last conference, there is now a majority for such a move. Done urgently we might cool the situation. I believe most EU countries would follow suit. It is also Europe, not the US, where the solution lies to getting the Zionists to negotiate in good faith. It is where they sell most of their products.

Israel not only ignores every UN resolution that references its ethnic cleansing and creation of an apartheid state, but every day carries out night raids and blocks people going about their peaceful business. Last week there were shots fired at fishing vessels, farms and worse still at a funeral, there were night raids on two villages, five attacks on houses, plus 16 “flying checkpoints”. This sort of happening is an everyday occurrence.

Peter Downey

Bath

• One benefit could be that progressives abandon the attempt to play realpolitik diplomats, seeking to impose a particular “solution” on Israel/Palestine. They might instead rediscover a clarity of purpose found in a return to principle. No ethnic discrimination, universal human rights, upholding international law, one person one vote; and support for all principled non-violent means that uphold these ideals in an effort to liberate both peoples from the current impasse. Unrealistic? Perhaps. But no more so than waiting for a “peace now” administration to replace Netanyahu’s.

Dr Martin Kemp Psychoanalyst

Eliana Pinto Consultant psychotherapist (retired)

UK Palestine Mental Health Network

• It looks as if Donald Trump is yet again missing an opportunity in recognising West Jerusalem – where I come from and studied – as Israel’s capital without also recognising Palestinian aspirations by setting up a US embassy in East Jerusalem as their de facto capital at the same time. This is surely a good time to progress the two-state solution most of the rest of the world seems to want as a part of a vision of a more hopeful political future. It would be a step he probably won’t take towards breaking the impasse in at least one arena of persisting international conflict on our troubled planet.

Ya’ir Z Klein

London

• Rashid Khalidi (Trump’s error is a disaster for the Arab world and the US too, 7 December) denounces Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Fine. But where do we go from here? Khalidi reminds us that the US supports Israel, yet regrets that it won’t now be able to be a peace broker. Why does it have to be? If those involved really want a “sustainable Palestinian-Israeli agreement”, why don’t they get together and make one? Why let Trump, or any other foreign head of state, prevent them?

Andrew Anderson

Edinburgh

• In the space of a week, Donald Trump uses Twitter to promote a neo-Nazi group in Britain, and panders to Benjamin Netanyahu by recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. I hope those who cast criticism of Israel as “antisemitism”, often as a backdoor route to attacking Jeremy Corbyn, will reflect on the toxic nexus between the racist hard right in the US and the nationalist hard right in Israel. And on the fellow travelling of Tory rightwingers represented by Priti Patel.

Christopher Clayton

Chester, Cheshire

• As Jews living in the UK and committed to a genuinely just peace in Palestine/Israel, we unreservedly condemn Donald Trump’s damaging, demoralising and dangerous statement that the US will recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. This change of US policy will add to the sense of isolation and hopelessness among Palestinians, and will further set back the possibility of positive change toward meaningful justice and political rights for them. Trump’s decision will not only further destabilise the Middle East, it will deepen tensions and divisions in communities around the world, jeopardising peace for all of us.

The board of deputies do not speak for us and we repudiate their statement welcoming Trump’s announcement (Trump will plunge world into ‘fire with no end’ over Jerusalem, 7 December). We call on Jews across the community to join the international chorus of protest against what Ian Black (President’s call tramples over 70 years of diplomacy, 7 December) describes as “this needlessly provocative move” and for those able to do so to support the Emergency Protest – Hands off Jerusalem, on Friday 8 December at 5.30pm outside the US embassy in Grosvenor Square.

Sir Geoffrey Bindman, Professor Jacqueline Rose, Dr Adam Sutcliffe, Dr Anthony Isaacs, Dr Vivienne Jackson, Henry Stewart, Merav Pinchassoff on behalf of the Independent Jewish Voices Steering Group

• Now is the appropriate time to remove the UN headquarters from the commercial capital of the US to somewhere politically neutral. I am sure that most UN member states and the majority of the world’s people would support such a move.

Dr Kevin Bannon

London

• As Shakespeare’s Hotspur says, anyone can call spirits from the vasty deep, but will they come? Trump may say Jerusalem is Israel’s capital, but that doesn’t make it so. He does not realise that being ill-read and unreflective (he has said he prefers his “gut feeling”) makes it easy for the “strong leaders” he admires, like Netanyahu and Putin, to play and sucker him for their own ends. It’s sad that such an inadequate man should have been elected the “leader of the free world”.

Michael Miller

Sheffield

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