Trump Lowers Expectations for Quick Embassy Move to Jerusalem

A story in Breitbart News on Sunday quoting “numerous unconfirmed reports circulating in the American media” which claimed that President Donald Trump would announce the relocation of the US Embassy in Israel from “the coastal city of Tel Aviv to the capital city of Jerusalem” on Monday (yesterday). The story sparked speculation in Jerusalem that the new President’s promises to move the embassy would be fulfilled. But President Trump seems to be walking back his promise. In a statement issued before a phone call between Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and President Trump on Sunday, Trump’s press secretary Sean Spicer lowered expectations that an announcement was imminent. “We are at the very beginning of even discussing this subject,” Spicer wrote in an email on Sunday. “There’s no decision,” he told reporters on Monday. Israeli media said the issue was barely discussed in the 30 minute call between Netanyahu and Trump on Sunday night. The former spokesman for Israel’s foreign ministry Yigal Palmor, offered his take on Spicer’s comments. “This really means, “Don’t call us, we’ll call you,” he wrote on Twitter. Incoming US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman owns an apartment in Jerusalem, and there have been reports in the Israeli press that he could work out of his apartment in Jerusalem, holding meetings at the US consulate when needed. While Israel sees all of Jerusalem, including east Jerusalem which it annexed in 1967 as its capital, US policy has always been that the final status of Jerusalem should be determined in bilateral negotiations. Palestinians say that east Jerusalem must be the capital of a future Palestinian state. Moving the US embassy to Jerusalem would be a de facto recognition of Israel’s annexation of east Jerusalem, and Palestinians have warned that this would have consequences. They have threatened diplomatic retaliation including rescinding their recognition of Israel.