Moving the United States embassy from Tel Aviv to occupied Jerusalem is bad politics, it is simply shooting oneself in the foot. It won’t do anybody any good but create further recrimination that the world could do without.
What the new US administration of President Donald Trump should be doing, especially in its early days, is demonstrate leadership, resolve, creativity, intuitiveness and be an honest broker — whether its for the peace process or any other important conflict-solving international issue.
It can’t do that if one of the first crucial decisions it takes is to move its embassy right in the middle of a hotly-disputed area. It would be like going into a minefield of intractable international law where everybody is aware of violations being committed. An international consensus and convention has already been established of not to do anything about occupied Jerusalem, not even discuss its legalistic trappings, until the dispute between the Palestinians and Israelis have been solved and an amicable agreement has been forged.
That maybe why the new US administration is slowly “back-tracking” without losing face about moving its embassy and trying to bury the gaffes that may have inadvertently been committed by it and maintain the decorum along with the rest of the countries in the world, whose embassies are all located in Tel Aviv rather than in occupied Jerusalem. Trump may finally be realising that, what one says during a presidential election campaign is a lot different from what one can actually do when one is in the driving seat, where new realities dictate terms and where things have to be thought out carefully and prudently.
Seasoned politicians, including previous US presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and who subsequently wavered the congressionally-introduced Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, have come to realise that long-time ago. They kept their diplomatic lips sealed in a sea of storm and anguish, when the question of rights and obligations took on very different meanings and assumptions.
Trump and the new Republican administration are in for a soul-searching ride that has just begun. As the theoretical sponsors of a foot-dragging peace process that seems to be going nowhere, they now have a golden opportunity to make good on an initiative that has long been intractable and languishing in the doldrums that has simply increased the differences between the Palestinians and Israelis.
In an attempt at patching things up and moving for damage control and anger management, the US administration has moved on to say that the talks are still “at the very beginning” and the “decision has to be carefully thought through”. Trump said he was still committed to “studying the decision very hard”, the decision is “not easy” and there are “two sides to it”. Politics and political interest do indeed rule the way with the new verbiage and sound-bytes suggesting the new administration is trying to wriggle out of what their new president may have previously promised.
This is the new diplomatic language everyone wants to hear. For the region at least its music to the ears, with everyone, including funnily enough, the Israelis — who have much to get out of the move and would be symbolic to their clamour for occupied Jerusalem being their undivided capital — can breathe normally again. Jordanian officials have long described that the decision to move the US embassy, if taken, would be “catastrophic” to the region, certainly would be a redline, fuel popular anger and give more ammunition to extremism and to terror organisations like Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant). It would bring the region to square one with potential for more violence.
The Israelis have long understood this. They have come to realise the potentially-explosive issue of occupied Jerusalem being the scene of endless intifadas (uprisings) and sought to downplay the bold step that Trump wants to take. But indeed this was seen as a bad move when a placatory approach was expected. Outwardly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a big deal out of the decision, but privately, he may have been thinking “this decision will only bring more needless headaches”. His hawkish Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, who normally wouldn’t be associated with adopting a rational stand, had said many times that the embassy issue wasn’t on the list of Israel’s priorities.
This view has also been stressed by Israel’s military generals who see the move in terms of undermining security and in their word, of increasing violence and recriminations. This can be taken as a first for the Israelis since they have always been blind to “violence” exercised by all others, except Palestinians.
Many felt that the American climb-down, or at least the shelving of their “bright embassy move idea”, has to do with another opportunistic objective of the Israeli government: A deal to turn a blind eye on colony activity in Occupied Territories. After all, Lieberman has already said as much when he listed colonies as one of Israel’s top priorities.
One sure move is that Trump is sweeping everything under the carpet. The quick appointment of his son-in-law Jared Kushner as the new US peace envoy suggests that he doesn’t want to rock the boat too much and a new round of “peace trips” are about to begin.
Marwan Asmar is a commentator based in Amman. He has long worked in journalism and has a PhD in Political Science from Leeds University in the UK.
