{"id":36263,"date":"2017-12-12T14:30:11","date_gmt":"2017-12-12T03:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=36263"},"modified":"2017-12-12T14:20:26","modified_gmt":"2017-12-12T03:20:26","slug":"trump-and-jerusalem-half-an-idea-is-much-worse-than-none","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/trump-and-jerusalem-half-an-idea-is-much-worse-than-none\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump and Jerusalem: half an idea is much worse than none"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"640\" height=\"474\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-36265 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/shadows-1779415_640.jpg\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/shadows-1779415_640.jpg 640w, https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/shadows-1779415_640-205x152.jpg 205w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/figure>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The tragedy of Donald Trump\u2019s<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/the-press-office\/2017\/12\/06\/statement-president-trump-jerusalem\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> announcement<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel\u2019s capital is that it didn\u2019t go far enough. It could, and should, have been a package along these lines:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The US recognises (West) Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and moves its embassy there, provided that the Israelis pursue<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> meaningful<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> peace negotiations with the Palestinians.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The US recognises (East) Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine and upgrades its consulate-general there\u2014its current de facto representative to the Palestinian Authority\u2014to a full embassy, provided that the Palestinians pursue<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> meaningful<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> peace negotiations with the Israelis.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Those negotiations include provisions for joint management of Jerusalem\u2019s Old City, acknowledging its sites of<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2017-12-05\/why-jerusalem-s-status-is-a-capital-controversy-quicktake-q-a\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">profound spiritual significance<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> for Jews, Christians and Muslims (respectively, the Temple Mount, Calvary\/the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the al-Aqsa Mosque).<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The US uses its (declining but still considerable) influence to support such an arrangement reached by the Israelis and Palestinians.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This highly optimistic and ambitious scenario would need time frames to put pressure on the parties, though, like many \u2018peace processes\u2019, the Middle East one has never been punctual. It would offer meaningful incentive to the Israelis and Palestinians to do something they haven\u2019t done for decades\u2014get serious about a negotiated peace. It would acknowledge that governments around the world, including Australia, accept that West Jerusalem is Israeli territory and the seat of government of the Jewish state and are happy to deal with it there, as they do. And it would acknowledge that, whatever Israel\u2019s assertion about Jerusalem\u2019s \u2018eternal and undivided\u2019 nature, it is in fact highly divided\u2014Jewish in the west and (despite Israeli settlements) Palestinian in the east.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Given the history of the conflict, there could be no guarantee that such an approach would work. But it would make clear to both sides that not changing behaviour carries real costs. And it might just have made Trump the mould-breaker and dealmaker he fancies himself to be.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Back to reality.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Trump claimed that his decision wasn\u2019t intended \u2018<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">in any way\u2019 to suggest a departure from America\u2019s strong commitment to facilitate a lasting peace agreement. In fact, it represents a radical shift in the US\u2019s approach to Jerusalem. Since the <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">US Congress passed\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/time.com\/5049019\/jerusalem-embassy-history\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">a law in 1995<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> requiring that the embassy be moved to Jerusalem by 1999, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">all<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> presidents have exercised a provision allowing them to sign a waiver delaying the move for six months in the interest of \u2018national security\u2019. Trump himself signed it on 1 June this year after Jordan\u2019s<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.haaretz.com\/us-news\/1.769266\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">King Abdullah<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> warned him that the move could threaten the two-state solution and exacerbate the Israeli\u2013Palestinian conflict. King Abdullah\u2019s warnings this time went unheeded, as did those of President <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Trump\u2019s (until now, at least)<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-usa-trump-israel-saudi-capital\/saudi-arabia-condemns-trump-decision-to-recognize-jerusalem-as-capital-of-israel-idUSKBN1E103Y\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">new best friends in Saudi Arabia<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">History, religion and identity have long made Jerusalem a strategist\u2019s nightmare. In late 1947, the United Nations endorsed a plan to divide British Palestine into two states, one Arab, one Jewish. The plan didn\u2019t include Jerusalem; the intent was that it be internationally administered. Israel came out of the 1948 Arab\u2013Israeli war controlling West Jerusalem. It conquered East Jerusalem during the six-day war in 1967 and passed a law in 1980 declaring \u2018complete and united\u2019 Jerusalem its capital. Some 200,000 Israeli settlers now live in East Jerusalem, alongside about 325,000 Palestinians. (Another 400,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank.)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In announcing the embassy relocation, Trump said that America wasn\u2019t taking a position on any final status issues, \u2018including the specific boundaries of the Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem, or the resolution of contested borders\u2019. Perhaps Trump was trying to be clever, even subtle, in offering no insight into how Jerusalem\u2019s challenges, sacred and profane, might be managed. Or perhaps, with his focus largely confined to a domestic support base, he just doesn\u2019t care.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The shockwaves, especially in the Islamic world, caused by Trump\u2019s announcement were predictable. Australia wisely distanced itself from the US position:<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.afr.com\/news\/julie-bishop-rules-out-following-donald-trump-on-jerusalem-recognition-20171206-gzznam\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Foreign Minister Julie Bishop<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> commented that mat<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">ters relating to Jerusalem were \u2018subject to Final Status negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority\u2019. Australia will continue its diplomatic representation to Israel from Tel Aviv and its representation to the Palestinian Authority from Ramallah in the West Bank.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bishop noted that any decision about the location of US embassies was a matter for the US. That\u2019s as lame a line as anyone could devise. Fortunately others, including the UK, the EU, France, Germany, China, Russia and the Pope, had the courage to be more<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-middle-east-42250340\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">directly critical<\/span><\/a> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">of Trump\u2019s announcement.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Israelis and Palestinians have demonstrated for 50 years that they\u2019re incapable of negotiating peace on their own. They need the energy, the resources and the clout of the US to make anything work. Bizarrely, sometime early in the New Year, Trump\u2019s senior adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, together with the White House Middle East envoy, Jason Greenblatt, will unveil a new Israeli\u2013Palestinian<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.haaretz.com\/middle-east-news\/1.827628\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">peace plan<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Will anyone take it seriously? Singularly ill-qualified to operate the peace process defibrillator, Trump is dealing America out of the game.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The tragedy of Donald Trump\u2019s announcement of US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel\u2019s capital is that it didn\u2019t go far enough. It could, and should, have been a package along these lines: The US recognises &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":744,"featured_media":36265,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1428,240,926,2070],"class_list":["post-36263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-donald-trump","tag-israel","tag-palestine","tag-us-foreign-policy"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Trump and Jerusalem: half an idea is much worse than none | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/trump-and-jerusalem-half-an-idea-is-much-worse-than-none\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Trump and Jerusalem: half an idea is much worse than none | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The tragedy of Donald Trump\u2019s announcement of US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel\u2019s capital is that it didn\u2019t go far enough. 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