On May 22 in Jerusalem, US President Donald Trump affixed his signature to a note and tucked it between the stones of the Western Wall in accordance with Jewish tradition. On June 1 in Washington, Trump will sign a waiver suspending the move of the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He will tuck the signed suspension of the 1995 act mandating the embassy transfer into an Oval Office drawer, where it will gather dust until he pulls it out in six months and extends the suspension.
Trump — like all three of his immediate predecessors, Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and Republican George W. Bush — is expected to sign the document that says moving the embassy to Israel’s self-declared capital (international law does not recognize it as such) would endanger US national security interests. Had House Speaker Newt Gingrich not been lured in 1995 into taking part in the political dirty trick that resulted in passage of the controversial embassy bill, engineered by AIPAC and Likud, his good friend Trump would not have been obliged to disappoint his “very good friend Benjamin,” as Trump referred to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a May 23 speech.
Israelis are used to the reality that the US Embassy is located in Tel Aviv and never made a big deal over it. The current ruckus over moving the embassy is a reminder that on top of the United States not recognizing East Jerusalem, annexed to Jerusalem in 1967, as part of the Israeli capital, it has also never actually recognized de jure Israel’s sovereignty over West Jerusalem. This is why the United States has avoided opening an embassy at the building designated for it in West Jerusalem, within the 1967 line.
The US law on moving the embassy was preceded by damaging and populist Israeli legislation. The Basic Law: Jerusalem, Capital of Israel, adopted by the Knesset in 1980, stipulates, “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel.” It resulted in the unanimous passage of UN Security Council Resolution 478, with the United States abstaining, determining that the legislation was “null and void and must be rescinded forthwith.” The resolution called on the foreign embassies located in Jerusalem at the time to pull out of the city, which they did.
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