JERUSALEM -- There were warnings of a new Palestinian uprising and calls for protests at U.S. embassies, dire predictions that hopes for peace would be dashed irretrievably -- and expressions of relief from Israelis who have waited a half-century for the world to remove the asterisk next to Jerusalem's name.
Yet on the whole, the responses in the region to reports that President Donald Trump will declare Jerusalem the capital of Israel -- something no U.S. president has done in the nearly 70 years since Israel's founding -- remained hedged, if not entirely restrained, on Saturday. Arabs and Israelis alike were impatient to see whether Trump would really do it, precisely how he would define Jerusalem, and what else he might say or do to qualify the change.
Trump's announcement, expected in a speech Wednesday, would stop short of fulfilling a campaign promise to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, a step for which many of Trump's Jewish and evangelical supporters, and their allies in the Israeli right wing, have been clamoring.
For Israelis, it would acknowledge the obvious: that their government sits in Jerusalem, mainly on its western side -- though the United States, along with the rest of the world, has not recognized the Holy City as Israeli territory, particularly since the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, when Israel conquered East Jerusalem.
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"That Trump will declare it? I'm glad, in case anyone was in any doubt," said Betty Mizrahi, 40, a government worker living in Har Homa, a neighborhood built on captured territory. "Jerusalem was always the capital. That people deny it is another matter."
Yet of all the issues that have defied resolution despite decades of talks between Palestinians and Israelis, the final status of Jerusalem -- with its sites holy to Jews, Christians and Muslims, and warring claims dating back to the Crusades and the Romans -- has been uniquely nettlesome.
The United States has taken pains to refrain from recognizing the city as Israel's capital precisely to avoid being seen as prejudging the outcome of peace talks, in which Palestinians seek to make East Jerusalem the seat of their eventual government.
Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization's executive committee, said dispensing with that long-standing reticence would reveal the United States as "so incredibly one-sided and biased" that it "would be the total annihilation of any chances of peace, or any American role in peacemaking."
"They're sending a clear message to the world: We're done," she said.
While moving the embassy would require little more than putting a new sign on existing U.S. consular offices in Jerusalem, Trump's declaring Jerusalem the capital would carry great symbolic power, Palestinian officials said.
"If anything, it is worse, actually," said Nasser al-Kidwa, a member of the central committee of Fatah, the dominant Palestine Liberation Organization faction, and a nephew of Yasser Arafat, its onetime leader. Recognition matters, he said, "not the stones" of an embassy building.
Mahmoud Habash, an adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said Saturday that if Trump were to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, it would amount to a "complete destruction of the peace process."
"The world will pay the price" for any change in Jerusalem's status, Habash said.
Ahmed Yousef, an adviser to Ismail Haniya, leader of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, was similarly critical of Trump's expected declaration. "I don't understand why he wants to antagonize over a billion Muslims around the world," he said.
The specific way in which Trump makes his declaration, however, could mean a dramatically different response on both sides of the conflict.
If he just refers to "Jerusalem" as Israel's capital or refers to the city's present municipal borders, then Trump would likely set off a strong backlash in much of the Arab world, analysts said.
Ashrawi warned it could lead to repercussions "that would not be easily contained," including violence. "To people who are looking for an excuse, this would be a ready-made excuse," she said.
If Trump were to limit his statement to West Jerusalem, however, it would likely antagonize supporters in the pro-Israel camp by undercutting their claim to a united capital and acknowledging Palestinian designs on East Jerusalem.
Any attempt at deliberate ambiguity is unlikely to fly because the United States will be forced to specify the territorial definition of Jerusalem that the president was relying upon, said Daniel Shapiro, who was President Barack Obama's ambassador to Israel.
"It accomplishes so little that I wonder if it's worth that headache," he said.
The timing of Trump's declaration was baffling both to those who warned against it and some who welcomed it.
Both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are awaiting a proposal by Trump's administration to restart the peace process. And Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman has held recent, separate meetings in Riyadh with Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Abbas, which have fueled speculation that Trump and Salman are trying to push through a plan.
In Gaza, Hamas issued a statement calling on Palestinians to "incite an uprising in Jerusalem so that this conspiracy does not pass." Yousef, the adviser to the Hamas leader, said Trump's move would drive up anti-American sentiment and "decimate whatever good will they have here."
Information for this article was contributed by staff members of The Associated Press.
A Section on 12/03/2017