Despite earlier
announcements, President Donald Trump has not yet decided whether to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital or whether to proceed immediately in moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to the city.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has not yet decided whether to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital or whether to proceed immediately in moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to the holy city. That’s according to his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner.
Kushner said Sunday that the president continues to weigh his options ahead of an announcement on the matter that is expected this week.
“The president is going to make his decision,” Kushner said in a rare public appearance at an event hosted by the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. “He is still looking at a lot of different facts.”
Kusher also said Trump’s push for a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians stems from a belief that his broader goals of stopping Iranian aggression and Islamic extremism will not be possible without it.
“If we’re going to try to create more stability in the region as a whole, you have to solve this issue,” Kushner said. Trump, he said, “sees this as something that has to be solved.”
Kushner’s comments were his first public remarks on his efforts to restart peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. They came as he faces increasing scrutiny over actions taking during the transition period following former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s guilty plea on charges of lying to the FBI.
Shortly before Kushner spoke, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas warned that U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital would jeopardize the White House’s Mideast peace efforts.
“Any American step related to the recognition of Jerusalem as capital of Israel, or moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, represents a threat to the future of the peace process and is unacceptable for the Palestinians, Arabs and internationally,” Abbas told a group of Arab lawmakers from Israel, according to the official Wafa news agency.
U.S. officials said last week that Trump was poised to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in a move that would upend decades of U.S. policy but that the president would put off moving the embassy from Tel Aviv.
The officials said Trump is expected to make his decision known in a speech on Wednesday.
The declaration would risk inflaming Middle East tensions. But it would also offset disappointment from Trump supporters from again deferring his campaign promise to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem.
Trump’s announcement will follow months of internal deliberations that intensified last week, said officials familiar with the discussions. They described Trump as intent on fulfilling his pledge to move the embassy but also mindful that doing so could set back his aim of forging a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, who claim part of Jerusalem as the capital of an eventual state.
Moving the embassy could spark widespread protest across the Middle East and undermine an Arab-Israeli peace push led by Kushner.
Trump’s campaign promises won him the support of powerful pro-Israel voices in the Republican Party. But he has faced equally forceful lobbying from close U.S. allies such as King Abdullah II of Jordan, who have impressed on him the dangers of abandoning a carefully balanced U.S. position on the holy city.
Under U.S. law signed by President Bill Clinton in 1995, the U.S. must relocate its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem unless the president waives the requirement on national security grounds, something required every six months.
Trump is likely to issue a waiver on moving the embassy by Monday, the officials said, though they cautioned that the president could decide otherwise.
All presidents since Clinton have issued the waiver. Trump signed the waiver at the last deadline in June.