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.
