Breaking: WH is Beginning Discussions on Pledge to Move US Embassy in Israel

WH is beginning discussions on pledge to move US embassy in Israel






Athena Jones and Elise Labott, January 22, 2017


Washington (CNN)The White House says it is in the beginning stages of discussions regarding President Donald Trump's pledge to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters Sunday: "We are at the very beginning stages of even discussing this subject."
Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu are scheduled to speak Sunday afternoon, although Israeli officials say this is not the main focus of the call.


"He's going to talk to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today about the Middle East, about Iran," White House adviser Kellyanne Conway said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."


http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/22/politics/white-house-donald-trump-us-embassy-israel/

White House: US in 'beginning stages' of talks to move US embassy to Jerusalem


By MICHAEL WILNER
Sun, 22 Jan 2017, 01:11 PM


"We are at the very beginning stages of even discussing this subject," White House spokesman Sean Spicer said in a statement.



WASHINGTON -- The Trump administration has begun deliberations over whether to move its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said on Sunday.

"We are the very beginning stages of even discussing this subject," Spicer said in a statement.

One adviser to US President Donald Trump, Kellyanne Conway, has said it is a top priority for the new administration, which took office just three days ago.

Conway said that Middle East peace would be a topic of conversation in Trump's first phone call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, taking place this hour.
Any decision to break with the status quo is likely to prompt protests from US allies in the Middle East such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt. Washington relies on those countries for help in fighting the Islamic State militant group, which the new US president has said is a priority.

The US Congress passed a law in 1995 describing Jerusalem as capital of Israel and saying it should not be divided, but successive Republican and Democratic presidents have used their foreign policy powers to maintain the US Embassy in Tel Aviv and to back negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians on the status of Jerusalem.



In early December, then-President Barack Obama renewed the presidential waiver until the beginning of June. It is unclear whether Trump would be able to legally override that waiver and go ahead with relocation of the embassy.


US diplomats say that, despite the US legislation, Washington's foreign policy is in practice broadly aligned with that of the United Nations and other major powers, which do not view Jerusalem as Israel's capital and do not recognize Israel's annexation of Arab East Jerusalem after its capture in the 1967 Middle East war.
Israel approved building permits on Sunday for hundreds of homes in three East Jerusalem settlements in expectation that Trump will row back on the previous administration's criticism of such projects.


Reuters contributed to this article.


http://m.jpost.com/Israel-News/White...IyNDQzNUFDRDU=

Report: Trump to Announce U.S. Embassy Move to Jerusalem Monday




http://media.breitbart.com/media/201...ty-640x480.jpgTHOMAS COEX/AFP/Getty Images

by Joel B. Pollak

January 22, 2017

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.”


At the inaugural ceremony itself, Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles stressed the themes of Zion and Jerusalem, quoting from Psalm 137:5: “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill.”


President Trump was scheduled to speak to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netnayhu by telephone on Sunday afternoon.


http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/01/22/report-trump-move-u-s-embassy-jerusalem-monday/