RUTHFULLY YOURS

Donald Trump made many campaign promises in his run to the Presidency, but none sounded more sincere than his commitment to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The week of his inauguration he repeated the pledge to an Israeli news outlet, adding, “I’m not a person who breaks promises.”

This promise will go unfulfilled when Mr. Trump visits Israel on his current trip to the Middle East. Administration officials have conveyed in the past week that, once again, the time isn’t appropriate for the move. Mr. Trump hasn’t explained his reversal, so we are left to assume that the reason for reneging is the same one U.S. Presidents of both parties have given back to the Clinton Presidency : The move might imperil the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Israelis no doubt will welcome Mr. Trump enthusiastically when he arrives, because he follows after the explicit hostility that Barack Obama displayed toward this important Middle East ally and its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Still, breaking this important public promise is difficult to understand.

Mr. Trump deepened the promise when he named New York lawyer David Friedman as his ambassador to Israel. Mr. Friedman said he would work to renew the bond between the two countries, “and I look forward to doing this from the U.S. Embassy in Israel’s eternal capital, Jerusalem.”

It is now evident that even a commitment of this much presidential prestige has been overturned by the U.S. State Department’s famous determination to continue the peace process with the Palestinians to the end of days. The history of this greatest of all diplomatic mirages extends back decades, but let us give the short version of why it won’t happen: The Palestinians claim Jerusalem as the capital of any future state, and the Israelis will never concede that claim.

Given this intractable stand-off, we would argue that Mr. Trump is more likely to break the peace-process gridlock if he makes good on his promise. It might make clear to the Palestinians that the wheels of history are not moving in their favor, and the time has arrived to enter into a credible negotiation with Israel.

The Administration officials who pushed Mr. Trump off his campaign promise no doubt argued that it risks alienating America’s Arab allies in the region. But allies such as Saudi Arabia and Jordan already have recognized that their priority has shifted away from Israel and Palestine and toward the existential threat of Iran’s nuclear program, its push for Shiite-led regional hegemony, and the rise of Islamic State. They are engaging Israel in ways that seemed impossible not long ago.

It has been 22 years since Congress passed the Jerusalem Embassy Act, requiring State to relocate the embassy. Every six months since, a U.S. President has signed a waiver to delay the move. It’s unfortunate see that President Trump, too, has wavered on this commitment. The least he can do for those who believed his campaign promise is to explain why he now believes he can’t keep it.

There is a fundamental misunderstanding, which is that if the US recognizes Jerusalem as capital of Israel, that would mean that the US recognizes Jerusalem as part of Israel.

However, the US embassy relocation legislation does not negate the status of Jerusalem’s status as a Corpus Separatum (Latin for “separated body”) as a term used to describe Jerusalem area in the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine. According to that plan, still supported by the US, the city would be placed under international rule as part of any final resolution of the Middle East state of affairs..

As a journalist, I covered events in the US capitol when Congress passed the US embassy Jerusalem relocation bill in October 1995, also known as the “Jerusalem Embassy and Recognition Act”.

There were expectations at the time that the embassy move would mean hat the US would renounce its position, adopted in 1948, that Jerusalem was not to be recognized as a part of Israel and that Jerusalem must be an international zone.

However, the final version of the Jerusalem Embassy and Recognition Act removed all explicit references to Jerusalem as “part of Israel” , without mention that Jerusalem would remain the exclusive capital of Israel.

The late Faisal Husseini , who then headed the PLO Jerusalem committee, was present in Washington at the time , as was Yossi Beilin, then deputy foreign minister of Israel –

Both Husseini and Beilin endorsed the wording of Jerusalem Embassy and Recognition Act in 1995, as it was passed into law, which , as enacted, stated:

(1) Jerusalem should remain an undivided city in which the rights of every ethnic and religious group are protected.

(2) Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of Israel.

In a press briefing at the White House on Tuesday — ahead of U.S. President Donald Trump’s trip to Saudi Arabia, Israel and Europe — National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster stammered when asked by a journalist if his boss believes that the Western Wall in Jerusalem is “part of Israel.”

“Part of what? I’m sorry,” McMaster replied, leaning forward, as if he had not heard the question. He did, however, answer the first half of the query: about whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be accompanying Trump on his visit to the Jewish holy site in the Israeli capital.

“No … I don’t … no Israel leaders will join President Trump to the Western Wall. He’s going to the Western Wall mainly in connection with the theme to connect with three of the world’s great religions. And to advance, to pay homage to these religious sites that he’s visiting, but also to highlight the theme that we all have to be united against what are really the enemies of all civilized people. And that we have to be joined together in a … in a … with an agenda of, of tolerance and moderation.”

This was his first evasion. His second came a few minutes later, when a different reporter pressed him to answer the original question about whether the U.S. administration considers the Western Wall part of Israel.

“Oh, that sounds like a policy decision, for, for … and you know, uh,” he said, laughing uncomfortably. “And that’s the president’s intention. … The president’s intention is to visit these sites to highlight the need for unity amongst three of the world’s great religions.”

McMaster’s refusal to state that the Western Wall is Israeli was highly significant, as it came in the wake of a scandal surrounding the issue. A day earlier, two officials from the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem — later named as Obama administration leftovers David Berns and Jonathan Shrier — snapped at the Israeli team assisting in the preparations for Trump’s visit for asking about the possibility of Netanyahu and/or local film crews accompanying the president to the holy site, saying: “It’s none of your business. It’s not even part of your responsibility. It’s not your territory. It’s part of the West Bank.”

The outcry from Netanyahu’s office was quick to follow, as was a swift denial from the White House. “The comments about the Western Wall were not authorized communication and they do not represent the position of the United States and certainly not of the president,” a senior administration official told The Times of Israel.

While the election of President Trump represented a setback to political-correctness, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s interview on May 14, 2017 NBC’s Meet the Press reflected the State Department’s political correctness on US-Israel and US-Arab relations, the Palestinian issue and the relocation of the US Embassy to Jerusalem.

The interview may have sent a message of US procrastination on the relocation of the US Embassy to Jerusalem, the ancient core of Judaism and Jewish history, which inspired the early US Pilgrims and Founding Fathers. Procrastination would be interpreted by Arabs as US retreat in the face of Arab pressure and threats, eroding the US posture of deterrence, triggering further pressure and emboldening anti-US Islamic terrorism.

Secretary Tillerson embraced the State Department’s zero-sum-game philosophy. He assumes that enhanced US-Israel relations undermine US-Arab relations. However, since 1948, and especially in recent years, US-Israel geo-strategic cooperation has surged dramatically, simultaneously with expanded US-Arab security cooperation, and unprecedented counter-terrorism cooperation between Israel and Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Jordan and Egypt, despite the lack of progress on the Palestinian front.

Contrary to conventional Western wisdom, the pro-US Arab regimes distinguish between challenges which are primary (e.g., the Iranian threat) and secondary/tertiary (e.g., the Palestinian issue). Therefore, when the machetes of Iran’s Ayatollahs and other Islamic terrorists are at their throats, the pro-US Arab regimes recognize that Israel is the only reliable “life insurance agent” in the Middle East, regardless of the Palestinian issue.

Secretary Tillerson insinuated that the relocation of the US Embassy to western Jerusalem – which is within the boundaries of pre-1967 Israel – could undermine the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. Thus, he provided tailwind to the 69-year-old Department of State’s view – which contradicts the position of the American people and their representatives in the House and Senate – that there is no legitimacy to Israel’s sovereignty over any part of Jerusalem. It radicalizes the Arabs, forcing them to outflank the US from the maximalist side, deluding themselves that they have nothing to lose and time is, supposedly, on their side.

Keep the embassy in Tel Aviv or move it to Jerusalem? The issue has turned into a fierce struggle between Trump’s advisers and his top cabinet members. He has until June 1 to decide.

A large whiteboard hangs in the office of Steve Bannon, U.S. President Donald Trump’s strategic advisor. In closely packed lines of black marker, it lists Trump’s campaign promises – a kind of to-do list. One of the first goals in the foreign affairs and defense category is moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

Two competing groups of senior Trump administration officials have been waging war over this issue for over four months, beginning during the transition period before Trump took office. On one side are some of his closest senior political advisors and appointments; on the other are leading cabinet ministers and most of the professional civil servants.

A senior Israeli official who heard from one of Trump’s advisors said that before Trump’s January 20 inauguration, there was a fierce argument over whether a pledge to move the embassy should be included in his inaugural address. The Prime Minister’s Office awaited the speech with a mix of anticipation and trepidation, but discovered that the opponents won out, and the embassy move was dropped from the speech.

The battle is expected to continue even after Trump’s visit to the Middle East, right up until June 1 – the date on which the presidential waiver signed by former U.S. President Barack Obama six months ago, which froze the embassy’s move to Jerusalem, will expire.

According to several people familiar with the administration’s internal debates – both in Israel and America, all of whom asked to remain anonymous – the group urging Trump to refuse to sign the waiver and finally move the embassy is headed by Bannon himself. A number of these sources told Haaretz that Bannon doesn’t see the embassy move as a promise by Trump to Israel, but as a promise to the president’s right-wing nationalist base that put him in the White House.

“He understands that many of the president’s voters want to see this promise kept,” said a former senior U.S. official who is in touch with the current administration.

Another dominant figure in the group pushing for the embassy move is new U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman. During the campaign, it was Friedman who, in interviews with both the American and the Israeli media, repeatedly stressed Trump’s promise to move the embassy. Last December, when Trump appointed him as ambassador, he said he would work to strengthen ties between America and Israel, “and look forward to doing this from the U.S. embassy in Israel’s eternal capital, Jerusalem.”

Ever since Trump took office on January 20, Friedman has been pushing the president to keep his promise. In an interview with the daily Israel Hayom this week, Freidman said he gave the president his personal opinion on the matter. But two administration officials said Friedman did much more than that. “Friedman is working on the embassy issue all the time,” one said.

Friedman, who submitted his credentials to Israeli President Reuven Rivlin this week, immediately began preparing senior Israeli officials for the possibility that his efforts will fail and Trump will decide not to move the embassy at this stage. “Even if it doesn’t happen now, it will happen later,” he told one of his Israeli interlocutors. “Don’t press. Give us time.”