US President Donald Trump’s declaration that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel is another major step forward for the Zionists since the Balfour Declaration, when the British created Israel from the rib of terrorism.

A primary objective of the Zionist Project that emanated from Europe was to occupy and control Palestine and to dominate the region as a bastion of Western civilisation. This colonial project received the support of the white supremacist government in the US, and right-wing parties in Europe.

The outcry by the aggrieved in the Arab and Muslim world and their pleas for justice will be of no effect. The leadership of the regional Arab rulers are more concerned in salvaging and securing their illegitimate thrones and power bases.

Most of them have bought into the fraudulent “threat” that Iran poses, relegating the just cause of the hapless Palestinians to total irrelevance. The grand plan now is to form this grand alliance against the resistance movements and Iran, the only bulwark against their hegemony.

In this endeavour, the US and Israel have bought the cooperation of the young, ambitious, murderous and reckless Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS). His profile fits neatly with the erratic and war-mongering nature of Trump and Netanyahu.

The complicity of Palestinian Authority with Israel in pursuing the illusion of a “peace process” has come to a dead end. The fraud of a “two-state” solution is glaringly evident. There is no alternative but to return to the time-honoured and internationally sanctioned armed resistance against the heinous oppression by Israel.

For the Zionists there will be no Israel without Jerusalem. And there will be no Jerusalem without the building of the Temple of Solomon inside the 35-acre Al-Aqsa Mosque compound referred to as Al-Haram Al-Sharif, or the Noble Sanctuary, by Muslims, and as the Temple Mount by Jews.

OPINION: An illegitimate capital for a state without legitimacy

Zionism is an ethnic cleansing, racist, colonial ideology developed in 1896 by an Austrian Jew Theodor Herzl. Its main goal was the establishment of the Greater Israel Project in the heart of the Arab and Muslim world, extending from the Nile River in Egypt to the Euphrates River in Iraq, as a Jewish-only homeland for what is termed the “Jewish People”.

The racism of political Zionism is a perfectly coherent system which inspires all the laws and all the practices of Israel. It encompasses all the odious characteristics of colonialism including ethnic cleansing, regular massacres, bombardments of entire civilian populations, wars of aggression, dispossession, exile, systematic racism, apartheid and destabilisation.

With a massive infusion of financial, diplomatic and military help from the colonial powers the Zionists accomplished this Zionist Project to establish the State of Israel on occupied Palestinian land after the genocide and ethnic cleansing of a majority of Palestinian Arabs, both Christian and Muslim.

Significantly for the Zionist Project, the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire fragmented Islam’s Arab heartland into some 40 weak and dependent territories and oil-rich protectorates.

Jerusalem, which houses the Al-Aqsa compound, belonged to the international community under the administration of the UN. It was granted this special status because of its importance to the three Abrahamic religions.

The illegal Israeli control of East Jerusalem, including the Old City, which Israel occupied in 1967, violates several principles of international law, which outlines that an occupying power does not have sovereignty in the territory it occupies.

Palestinians in Jerusalem, who number around 400,000, hold only permanent residency status, not citizenship, despite being born there – in contrast with Jews who are born in the city. And, since 1967, Israel has embarked on a quiet deportation of the city’s Palestinians by imposing difficult conditions for them to maintain their residency status.

Israel has also built at least 12 fortified Jewish-only illegal settlements in East Jerusalem, housing some 200,000 Israelis, while rejecting Palestinian building permits and demolishing their homes as punishment for building illegally.

The city of Jerusalem is very important to Muslims, with a rich history intimately linked with prophetic history. Al-Aqsa Mosque holds immense significance in Islamic religious tradition and Muslims maintained the sacredness of this city in the full sense of the word, maintaining the tolerant multi-religious and multi-faith character of Jerusalem.

The Zionists have distorted and misrepresented the history of the region established by Islam over the past 1,300 years. They have overturned the demography of Palestine, controlling and Judaising the Old City and East Jerusalem as a whole.

OPINION: Trump has confirmed the death of the peace process, so what’s next?

The Trump declaration recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel shatters the illusion of the US as an “honest broker” interested in a just resolution of the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine, the facade of an endless “peace process”, and the two-state solution.

The Zionist Project has taken a step forward in entrenching Israel as the forward base for Western powers intent on dominating the Islamic world. An intifada (uprising) against the oppressors, not only in Occupied Palestine, but also the illegitimate Arab rulers, is inevitable.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.