CAIRO — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday again blasted Donald Trump in a fiery and emotional speech, saying the US leader’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital was “sinful” and “ill-fated.”

Abbas told a conference on Jerusalem in Cairo that the United States has disqualified itself from continuing as a broker in the long-stalled Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, a role America has had for decades.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday he was certain the US Embassy in Israel would be moved to Jerusalem sometime this year, much sooner than Trump administration officials have estimated.

Netanyahu told Israeli reporters traveling with him in India that his “solid assessment” is that the American Embassy “will be moved far faster than what we think ... in the course of the year.”

“Jerusalem will be a gate for peace only if it is Palestine’s capital, and it will be a gate of war, fear and the absence of security and stability, God forbid, if it is not,” Abbas said. “It’s the gate for peace and war and President Trump must choose between the two.”

Jerusalem “is our eternal capital, to which we belong, just as it belongs to us,” said Abbas. He also renewed his call on Arabs and Muslims to visit Jerusalem, assuring would-be visitors that such visits would not amount to “normalization” with Israel.

“Visiting the prisoner does not mean normalization with the jailor,” he said.

“Don’t abandon us,” he pleaded, “Visits by Muslims, Arabs and Christians lend support to the city, amount to the protection of its holy sites and give support to its (Arab) residents.”

The Cairo conference was organized by Al-Azhar, the primary seat of learning for the world’s Sunni Muslims.

The Saudi delegation to the conference is headed by Minister of Islamic Affairs, Call and Guidance Sheikh Saleh Al-Asheikh.

Earlier, Al-Azhar’s grand imam and Egypt’s top Muslim cleric, addressed the conference. Describing Trump’s Jerusalem decision as “unjust,” Sheikh Ahmed Al-Tayeb said it must be countered by a revival of awareness of the Palestinian question.

“We want this year, 2018, to be the year of Jerusalem, a year in which we offer moral and material support to the people of Jerusalem,” said Al-Tayeb.

Arab League Secretary General Ahmed Aboul Gheit said the US decision to freeze crucial funding for the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees was aimed at wiping out the whole issue.

“This decision affects the education and health of Palestinians and aims to eradicate the question of refugees,” he said at the conference in Cairo.

On Tuesday, the United States held back $65 million that had been destined for UNRWA, two weeks after President Donald Trump threatened future payments to the agency. — Agencies