'The end of peace process'

A senior Palestinian official warned US president-elect Donald Trump Friday that moving the American embassy to Jerusalem would destroy prospects of peace with Israel and push the region into turmoil.

The remarks by the secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, Saeb Erekat, came as Israeli officials praised Trump's decision to nominate hardliner David Friedman as envoy to the Jewish state.

The Palestinians regard east Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.

Moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv before a final agreement on the conflict "will be the destruction of the peace process," Erekat told journalists.

He also warned of the potential outcome of moving the embassy and a change in the "longstanding position" of the United States that considers "the settlements as illegal".

"I look David Friedman and Trump in the eye and tell them -- if you were to take these steps of moving the embassy and annexing settlements in the West Bank, you are sending this region down the path of something that I call chaos, lawlessness and extremism," he said.

Friedman, a bankruptcy attorney, supports settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank, characterised by succesive US administrations as an "obstacle to peace" with the Palestinians.

In a Trump transition team statement on Thursday announcing his appointment, Friedman said he wanted to work for peace and looked forward to "doing this from the US embassy in Israel's eternal capital, Jerusalem".

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and members of his right-wing government welcomed on Friday Friedman's nomination.

The United States and most UN member states do not recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, and the city's status is one of the thorniest issues of the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Israel captured Arab east Jerusalem in the Six-Day War of 1967 and subsequently annexed it in a move never recognised by the international community.

The Palestinians claim it as the capital of a future state.

Trump's spokesman Jason Miller made clear on Friday that Friedman has the president-elect's full support and that the plan to move the embassy will stand.