Numerous unconfirmed reports are circulating in the international media that President Donald Trump intends announcing Monday that he will relocate the U.S. embassy to Israel from the coastal city of Tel Aviv to the capital city of Jerusalem.
Jerusalem has been Israel’s capital city since its founding in 1948, but most countries have deferred moving the embassy there because the original UN partition plan for the British Mandate proposed Jerusalem as a city under international sovereignty.
Jordan, the Palestinians, and all surrounding Arab nations rejected the UN plan, and the Jordanian army took over the eastern half of Jerusalem in 1948, expelling the Jewish inhabitants of the Old City, where Jews had lived for several millennia.
With that part of the UN plan effectively rejected by Jordan and the Arab world, Israel established its capital in western Jerusalem. Though Palestinians, in theory, claim all of Jerusalem for themselves, the part of Jerusalem west of the 1949 armistice line (the “1967 lines,” or the “Green Line”) will unquestionably remain part of Israel in any peace agreement.
The core of the Arab and Muslim rejection of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is a rejection of Jewish claims to religious and historical connection to the city itself. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat once turned down an offer of shared sovereignty over the Temple Mount because, as he told then-President Bill Clinton, he saw the Jewish claim to the holy site as fictitious.
In 1995, Congress mandated that the U.S. move the embassy to Israel through the Jerusalem Embassy Act. The law, however, contained a waiver that allowed the president to keep the embassy in Tel Aviv, acknowledging the supremacy of the executive in determining the foreign policy of the U.S. Trump’s pledge on Monday — if it comes to fruition — would decline that waiver.
Opponents of the decision to move the embassy have warned that it would set off violence in the Arab world. But it would also inspire joyful celebrations in Israel and around the world, as the U.S. would likely inspire other countries to follow its example, and would help Israel cement its national vision of “a free nation in our land, the land of Zion and Jerusalem.”
The municipality of Jerusalem granted final approval Sunday for the construction of hundreds of new homes in east Jerusalem, while a hard-line Cabinet minister pushed the government to annex a major West Bank settlement as emboldened Israeli nationalists welcomed the presidency of Donald Trump.
After eight years of testy ties with President Barack Obama, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he is looking forward to a new era of close relations with the U.S. under Trump. The two were scheduled to talk on the phone later Sunday.
At his weekly Cabinet meeting, Netanyahu thanked Trump for his friendship and his inauguration speech pledge to battle radical Islamic militants. He said they would discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the situation in Syria and the Iranian threat, among other issues.
More hawkish elements in his coalition, however, are already calling for concrete action given Trump’s perceived acquiescence to Israeli settlement building.
Education Minister Naftali Bennett, leader of the pro-settler Jewish Home Party, was pressing the government to back legislation that would annex Maaleh Adumim, a sprawling West Bank settlement just east of Jerusalem. He also urged Netanyahu to abandon his stated position in favor of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
Netanyahu, a longtime supporter of the settlements, has nonetheless been cautious about expanding them in the face of strong opposition from the U.S. and other Western allies. With Trump signaling a much softer line toward the settlements, Israeli hard-liners say there is no longer any reason to show restraint.
“For the first time in 50 years, the prime minister can decide: either sovereignty or Palestine,” Bennett wrote on Twitter.
Annexing Maaleh Adumim would be seen as undermining negotiations. It is also in a strategic location in the middle of the West Bank that could impede the establishment of a future Palestinian state.
In the meantime, the Jerusalem municipal housing committee granted building permits for 566 new homes in east Jerusalem. The permits had been put on hold for the final months of the Obama administration.
Building is planned in the neighborhoods of Ramot, Pisgat Zeev and Ramat Shlomo.
“We’ve been through eight tough years with Obama pressuring to freeze construction,” said Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat. “I hope that era is over and we now we can build and develop Jerusalem for the welfare of its residents, Jews and Arabs alike.”
Deputy Mayor Meir Turjeman, who heads the committee, said an additional 11,000 homes were planned in east Jerusalem. He said he hopes to get the plans approved by the end of the year and begin construction in the next two to three years.
Israel clashed frequently with Obama over construction in areas it conquered in the 1967 Mideast war, and last month, the Obama White House allowed the U.N. Security Council to pass a resolution condemning settlements as illegal.
In a sign of the changing times, a delegation of West Bank settler leaders said it was invited by Trump administration officials to attend the inauguration.
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