Trump Considers Moving U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem a Very Big Priority

(The Wall Street Journal)- President-elect Donald Trump considers moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv a “very big priority,” senior adviser Kellyanne Conway said in a radio interview Monday, describing a step that would represent a major reversal of longstanding U.S. policy.

Both Israel and the Palestinians have claims to the contested city, and the U.S. has held that Jerusalem’s final status should be the subject of broader international negotiations aimed at resolving the long-simmering dispute.

“He made that very clear during the campaign. And as president-elect I’ve heard him repeat it several times, privately if not publicly,” Ms. Conway said in an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. “It’s something that our friend in Israel, a great friend in the Middle East, Israel, would appreciate and something that a lot of Jewish Americans also have expressed their preference for.”

Congress has bristled at the executive branch’s refusal to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and in 1995 passed legislation requiring that the U.S. embassy be relocated there.

But the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy act allows the president to waive that order for six month periods for national security reasons, which presidents from both parties have consistently done since the law took effect.

“It’s a great move, it’s an easy thing for him to do based on how much he talked about that I think, in the debates, on the stump why it’s important to do,” Ms. Conway said, adding that such a move was also important to Evangelical Christians.

“Evangelical Christians always have Israel on the top of their list,” she said.

Mr. Trump pledged repeatedly on the campaign trail to move the embassy. However, former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush made similar comments as candidates that went unfulfilled.

“Every other candidate made the promise but did not act on it because of being told it would inflame opinion throughout the Arab world and potentially trigger violent demonstrations against our embassies,” said Dennis Ross, who advised multiple presidents on the Middle East, including President Barack Obama.

It’s unclear exactly where Mr. Trump would move the U.S. embassy, but its location could make a difference. Mr. Ross, now at the Washington Institute, said that practically speaking, moving the embassy to West Jerusalem shouldn’t affect the eventual “final status” of the city because few question whether that area of the city would be part of Israel in any final settlement of the decades-old conflict.

“But Jerusalem for both Israelis and Palestinians (and Arabs) is an emotional issue and it is easy to ratchet up those emotions when it appears the future of the city is being affected. Rational arguments don’t tend to be heard,” he said.

Jerusalem has long been a particularly difficult part of the long-running conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians. Israel captured the western part of the city in 1948 after the country declared statehood. Later, it annexed East Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War. Most countries, including the U.S., refused then to accept Israel’s annexation of the eastern part of the city and no country maintains an embassy in Jerusalem though many, including the U.S., have consulates there.

Israel considers Jerusalem to be its undivided capital.

The last round of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks collapsed in 2014 and today, the two sides remain at odds over the construction of Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, the release of Palestinians held in Israeli jails and the schism between Fatah and Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip.