Our Congress has voted overwhelming to move the embassy to Jerusalem . Our President is just doing as the Congress voted for. The notion that a country can't pick where to have it capitol is stupid. The United States nor does the World have no right to tell Israel where its capitol should be.
Wake up World!!
As Syria crumbles and the rest of the middle east is in disarray,maybe the Palestinians should wake up and talk to Israel and the US before the opportunity set sail and leaves
The rest of the moderate Arab world is talking to Israel they should talk also.
A embassy doesn't stop a 2 state solution.
Grow up
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"The consulate in Jerusalem will provide an office for the American ambassador until a new embassy is built."
Well then let’s hope the new embassy is built real soon.
The picture looks as if the consulate is on a lot on an industrial estate in the middle of nowhere. Never a place where the US wants to be.
Bibi – if you want this to work and to show the world how important this move is, make sure that the new US embassy is located in the best building in the best neighborhood.
Optics are important.
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Even though I did not like most of President's Trump domestic and foreign policies, I congratulate him for taking the courage to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and declaring Pakistan as a terrorist state.
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and those who plan, and know, with cancerous certitudes, continue not to understand that reality, however defined, and by whom, is ever present uncertainty, interacting in levels and qualities, with unpredictabilities, randomness, and lack of total control, no matter what one does, or doesn’t choose to do. Where a set of services, housed in a secured-building, will change an existing, daily, violating WE-THEY?
Will this tactic bring closure to a festering, unreaolvable, human created, religiously-reinforced flawed State as willful blindness “cataracts” myopic shortsightedness? Cure policy deafness if those who neither listen nor hear? Overcome the barricades of immunizing - ignorance built to protect from knowing, understanding and taking personal responsibility for the implications and consequences of words and deeds;said, done as well as not? This is not a news report about a house being built . It is an addition to the human literature of hubris being honed! This time in the Holy Land by God’s flawed creations.
"The Arnona compound sits between the predominantly Jewish West Jerusalem and East Jerusalem"
Perfect placement, after Trump following administration can say that there will be one embassy for two countries as a cost saving measure.
huge waste of money. so much for the businessman president.
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Every Israeli I know, across the political spectrum, is delighted by this move. They’re surprised too, not having thought that recognition of Jerusalem as their capital - something they believe in deeply - would happen at all. Foreigners would be surprised to know that Israelis see themselves as the victim, not as an oppressor, and this recognition of Jerusalem makes them feel seen and heard, legitimized. This is not an affectation, or political maneuvering for (most of) them.
The USA is really Israel’s only true friend in the world, so it is fitting that the US embassy will be the first in Jerusalem.
European countries like Israel too, for strategic reasons they dare not articulate, but they practice a domestic realpolitik based on their sizable Muslim minorities at home. They won’t follow this decision anytime soon, but their kowtowing at home will not spare them from the Arab world’s ire over past wrongs. Such accommodations never do.
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So the US embassy will be located in a West Jerusalem neighborhood, in the pre-1967 side of the Green Line. Who disputes that this land is part of Israel? No one, because even people who believe that Israel should give up any land obtained during the Six Day War, have no argument about this area.
So why the anger about the move of the US embassy? Because people believe that the Palestinians should get do decide whether Israel’s capital deserves international recognition? It’s a funny position because embassies were located away from Jerusalem prior to 1967 because they were at risk from attack by Israel’s Arab neighbors, so once Israel neutralized that threat, the embassies should stay put on moral grounds? In other words, Israel’s Arab neighbors get to determine the location of Israel’s capital. And what other nation is subject to the same treatment?
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Jerusalem, east and west combined, is two-thirds Jewish. It was also a majority Jewish before 1948.
And by the way, if anyone cares, Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in the Old Testament. None in the Koran.
So why are we even talking about this?
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The Times looks at everything Israel does more microscopically than anywhere else in the planet.
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I don’t know who is going to more annoyed by the move, Palestinians or embassy employees who have currently enjoy a great beachfront location In Tel Aviv.
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While the Palestinian leadership moans and complains at the UN for being treated unfairly, Israel and the US take concrete moves to change reality.
While Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas boycotts unconditional negotiations with Israel and instead asks the UN to do his negotiating for him, Palestinian women line up to go to a Israeli cosmetician not far from the location of the new American Embassy.
See the pattern here?
Unless and until the Palestinians elect a new leadership, they will be stuck with sclerotic, unreconstructed dinosaurs with no vision, no understanding of local or international realities, unable to keep pace with events.
I have some advice for Danny Seidmann: Sir, impress upon your Palestinian clients that time is of the essence. The US and much of the rest of the international community has grown weary of their intransigence, and no one -- NO ONE -- will do their negotiating for them.
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Who does this benefit? It appears only Netanyahu, who is embroiled in corruption. Trump who is also a criminal but not in jail (YET) is only concerned with Power & money. The Palestinians are not pleased nor is the global community at large with this move. It reaks of potential WAR in an area that is needing stabilization not an influx of greed! What the h... is wrong with this Administration? It appears on most fronts, that they really want WAR. Trump owns munition plants.Maybe that is the underlying purpose!
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Where's Trump's money invested?
http://fortune.com/2016/08/09/here-are-donald-trumps-14-biggest-stock-ma...
The Palestinians have lots of excuses for violence. Will the Palestinians ever have an excuse for peace?
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Tony:
Golda Meir famously said that peace will come when the Arabs love their children more than they hate the Jews.
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“a small office”
What??? They’re gonna be sitting ducks?
Give me a break!
Perhaps this will spur the Palestinians to come to the bargaining table and seek a real peace. Maybe they stop calling for the destruction of the entire state of Israel, follow that up with a cessation of compensation paid to the families of suicide bombers, sweeten the pot by stopping rocket attacks and terror tunnels. Then, maybe, just then, the Israelis will yield a bit and make real advances toward a two-state solution that a majority of the population believes is the correct solution. Until then, long live Jerusalem as Israel's capital.
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There goes the neighborhood!
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How do the people in the area feel?
Maybe some are thinking to themselves, 'Oh great, a bomb magnet is coming to the neighborhood.'
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For those who suggest that Israel could be "punished" by cutting off aid, you should know that military aid is provided in the form of credits in an account at the Federal Reserve, which money may only be expended by purchasing weapons and other hardware from US arms manufacturers. Those companies spread the work over as many Congressional districts as possible, so that curring off the aid amounts to cutting jobs in all of those CDs. If you think that any member of Congress is going to voluntarily do that to jobs in their own district, think again. Corporate welfare is alive and well.
If you are a BDS advocate (or even if you are not), I suggest you watch the video at the following link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45Rkjp0rU-o
Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East and our only reliable ally in the Middle East.
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Joe from Boston, the money we give Israel just frees up their money for other things like universal health care for their citizens. Money is fungible
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Democracies occupy other countries?
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e.s.
CORPORATE WELFARE is the issue.
DavidD:
The US has a long history of occupying other countries, overthrowing elected governments, and doing similar things. We were not "heroes" in Vietnam. We attacked Iraq in 2003 for no legitimate reason. So democracies sometimes do some nasty and stupid things.
When the other guys do not even recognize that you exist, and explicitly state in their official documents that they will not rest until they wipe you out, it is hard to negotiate.
There are peace treaties with both Egypt and Jordan since the late 1970s, which remain in force and are honored by both sides. The Palestinians have, in Abba Eben's famous comment "never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity."
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It is not enough for Trump to wound; he's not satisfied unless he's rubbing salt in the wound. That's how he gets his jollies.
Yom Ha'atzmaut (Independence Day) is a national Israeli holiday to be celebrated this year on April 19. May 15 is Yawm an-Nakba (Catastrophe Day) for Muslims and the beginning of Ramadan. My guess is that Ramadan is not an ideal time to annoy many of the 1.8 billion Muslims.
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Given recent reactions, the world's Muslims care even less for Palestinian cause today than the lip service they've been giving it the last seventy years.
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This is the stupidest idea I ever heard of. Changing the U. S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The 2nd stupidest is the idea of the U.S. Ambassador making a commute of at least an hour and a half, each way, (three hours round trip) from North of Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, daily. This will cost a fortune in security. All to satisfy the egos of a couple of madmen. This looks to end poorly. Are there no intelligent people in the world who can stop the madness???
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It is an accepted diplomatic reality that each country has the sovereign right to chose its capital and that choice is respected by all countries with which it has diplomatic relations. The anomalous situation involving Israel was another example of the double standards applied to the world's lone Jewish state.
For those who care about the rule of law, or pretend to, the longstanding original excuse was the supposed declaration of Jerusalem's status as a "corpus separatum" set out in UNGA 181. Aside from the fact that "Jerusalem" was defined to include, among other towns, that of Bethlehem, and that the non-binding resolution was rejected by the Arabs, the UN's own Charter (Article 80) denied it any authority to diminish the rights given the Jewish people under the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine which was still in existence in 1947. After Israel's independence, the UN had no more power to draw its borders than it would in directing the US to return Alaska to Russia or the Louisiana Territories to France.
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This move is equivalent to shifting the deck chairs on the Titanic.
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It would be another matter if the Palestinians had not been willing to kill over a long list of grievances from before the start of the creation of the state of Israel. The Palestinian leadership's call for blood in the streets has been triggered by murderers of Jewish children actually brought to trial, by old men praying at the Wailing Wall, by security camera installation after Jewish security guards are killed, by rumors and conspiracy theories of secret weapons, by anything that suits them. So why are we now pretending that Jerusalem is the key? Jerusalem is the eternal capital of Israel. It has been for thousands of years before the birth of Mohammed or Jesus. Countries like Sweden and Brazil make themselves ridiculous by denying the Jewish claim to Jerusalem, but too many UN General Assembly have never minded looking ridiculous if they could keep the threat to Israel ongoing. Israel, tiny Israel, is fighting the Iranian effort to take over the Middle East from the Mediterranean through Iraq. They are far too realistic to play with the idea that giving in to the latest in the long, long list of Palestinian demands would help them survive.
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How tiring. It may be the case that there was an ancient Jewish presence in Palestine, but there was also an ancient Canonite, Ammonite, and many other "ites" presence there too. The fact is that the Diaspora was over 2000 years ago, and many other people, including the Palestinians, had moved into the neighborhood and made it their home. The establishment of Israel was a political mistake on the part of the European powers, and certainly it was morally unjustifiable, and certainly the Palestinians who were expelled from their homes had every reason to protest this, including by violent means. Those violent means were unsuccessful, and because of the financial and military support of , especially, the United States, Israel has "won", at least for now and the foreseeable future. But the only moral case which can be made for the existence of Israel is found in the French expression, "fait acccompli". Our own culpability for the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous people of Palestine will remain a stain on our history equivalent to the ethnic cleansing committed by us against the Native Americans.
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WAn: are you truly unaware of the fact that there’s has been a continuous Jewish presence in that land and not just an ancient one? The various "ites" to whom you refer have all disappeared, unlike the Jewish people who have survived. The ARabs are not indigenous to the land but were successful imperialists whose gains you seem to want to maintain by some strange appeal to morality. Is there then some statute of limitations where a conquerors rights overcome those of the indigenous population? Would you make such a claim in any other conflict, or just the Arab-Israeli one?
Who were the “indigenous” people?
Certainly not the “Palestinians”
With names like:
al-Masri - the Egyptian
al-Mughrabi - the Moroccan
al-Djazair - the Algerian
al-Yamani - the Yemeni
al-Afghani - the Afghan
al-Turki - the Turk
al-Hindi - the Indian
al-Hourani - the Hauranite (from southern Syria)
al-Kurdi - the Kurd
al-Ajami - the Iranian
al-Shami- the Syrian
Khamis - Bahrain
al-Araj- part of Morocco
Halabi - Aleppo, Syria
Bardawil - named after a lake in Egypt
I have yet to hear of anyone with the surname "al-Filastini."
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Wow. Thanks for the heads up about anticipating violence during Ramadan.
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The Palestinians refused to negotiate with the Israelis despite the many attempts of evenhanded President Obama. They still refuse to negotiate with the Israelis. I don't see the difference. Moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem isn't a priority, but it also doesn't seem to have had much effect. The Palestinians were intransigent when Obama was trying to woo them, and are intransigent when President Trump isn't. Maybe this will cause them to reconsider their approach, though cutting off their subsidies might be a better tool.
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Maybe cutting off the$5 billion in annual "aid" the US sends to Israel would help, too.
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At least we get something for that aid; intelligence aid in preventing terrorist attacks, technology such as Iron Dome, which I would like to see around US airports before somebody gets hold of a shoulder fired missile, an occasional hearty thank you, a refuge for Western aid workers and reporters when they have to run from their oh so grateful clients in the Muslim world. The 80 years worth of aid, the better part of a billion dollars a year, that the Palestinians have gotten; you seen any benefits to America from that lately?
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No one involved in this mess is perfectly innocent, but the Palestinians as a people deserve to be respected and have the right to their homeland. The continual encroachment on their lands is unacceptable and should be called out by the international community.
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This has Kushner all over it! Stupid move! A big waste of American taxpayer money! No way!
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Wrong. It has Sheldon Adelson written all over it. Too bad for the Palestinians that their leader at the time (Arafat) rejected Bill Clinton's peace proposals shortly before he left office. They were accepted by Israel.
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Please post a link to the map discussed at the Clinton meeting that the Israelis accepted. No map means no agreement was reached.
He didn’t say an agreement was reached, just that an offer was made. Read Bill Clinton’s autobiography and Dennis Ross’s account—they were in the room.
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