Well, it looks like our president-elect is going to do it, as well he should. It is a long overdue.
How Donald Trump could soon discard a long-standing precedent on Israel
Every four years, presidential candidates routinely signal their support for moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Then, after they’re sworn into office, they balk when faced with the potential ramifications.
Comments from Trump aides and the mayor of Jerusalem, though, suggest that Trump could be poised to discard yet another diplomatic axiom and relocate the embassy “fairly quickly” after he enters the White House. That move would be highly political, effectively meaning that the United States was recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, which it has refused to do for decades out of concern about provoking Palestinians who want part of the city to become their own capital.
The question of Jerusalem’s status is the most sensitive and complicated issue in the long-running conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. It is fraught with political, religious and nationalist implications that potentially could create an uproar throughout the Middle East and the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims.
Trump will have an opportunity to decide the fate of the U.S. diplomatic mission on June 1, at the expiration of another six-month waiver President Obama signed to the Jerusalem Embassy Act passed by Congress in 1995 mandating that the embassy be moved by 1999.
“It’s hard to argue you could harm an already-comatose peace process, but you don’t want to make matters worse,” said Aaron David Miller, a former State Department official who advised Republican and Democratic administrations on the Middle East. “And you do want to maintain the hope and illusion that under some circumstances, a two-state solution is possible. By forcing the issue upfront as an immediate act of the Trump administration, you’re essentially burying that possibility.”
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