Some 350 people joined the protest in the Swiss capital Bern
(Keystone)
Some 350 people demonstrated in Bern on Saturday against the US decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move its embassy there. The rally was peaceful.
Protestors carried banners through the centre of the Swiss capital calling for the respect of international law rather than the law of the strongest.
In a press release at the end of the demonstration, organizers called on the Federal Council (the Swiss cabinet) to officially recognise Palestine as a state; they also demanded an end to Swiss-Israeli military cooperation and imported products from occupied territories.
The rally was organised by several Palestinian associations and the Swiss-Palestinian society.
President Donald Trump announced at the beginning of December that the US would recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, contrary to international conventions.
The international community does not recognise Israeli sovereignty over the whole of the city. Israel considers the city as its eternal and indivisible capital. Palestinians, however, want the capital of their independent state to be in the city’s eastern sector, which Israel annexed after the 1967 Middle East war.
At the end of 2017, a majority of UN member states including Switzerland called on the US government in a resolution to withdraw the decision.
All rights reserved. The content of the website by swissinfo.ch is copyrighted. It is intended for private use only. Any other use of the website content beyond the use stipulated above, particularly the distribution, modification, transmission, storage and copying requires prior written consent of swissinfo.ch. Should you be interested in any such use of the website content, please contact us via contact@swissinfo.ch.
As regards the use for private purposes, it is only permitted to use a hyperlink to specific content, and to place it on your own website or a website of third parties. The swissinfo.ch website content may only be embedded in an ad-free environment without any modifications. Specifically applying to all software, folders, data and their content provided for download by the swissinfo.ch website, a basic, non-exclusive and non-transferable license is granted that is restricted to the one-time downloading and saving of said data on private devices. All other rights remain the property of swissinfo.ch. In particular, any sale or commercial use of these data is prohibited.
