US to move embassy to Jerusalem
PRESIDENT Donald Trump would keep his pledge to move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani said, despite Palestinian warnings that this would spark violence and sabotage the prospect of renewed peace talks.
Travelling to Israel with messages from Trump to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Giuliani said Trump and his advisers would probably take “six months or so” to develop a new strategy for peace efforts in the Middle East. How and when the US moves the embassy will be discussed when Netanyahu visits the White House next month.
“I think you’ve got to wait a little bit, but it will get done,” Giuliani said of the embassy move, speaking in an interview in Tel Aviv.
The fate of Jerusalem is among the most sensitive issues Israelis and Palestinians will need to address in any future peace negotiations. Israel took the eastern part of the city from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East War and considers all of the city as its capital, while Palestinians want the eastern portion as the capital of their hoped-for state.
Trump realised the embassy decision affects “four or five countries and how they’re going to react”, Giuliani said. “He needs to know how the prime minister of Israel is going to react and how he wants to see something like this done.”
Trump told Fox News this week it was too early for him to speak publicly on the issue. Giuliani, who was known during his tenure for a hardline attitude towards even petty crime in New York, dismissed Palestinian warnings that moving the embassy would ignite the whole region.
“I think this country is capable of dealing with waves of violence,” the former mayor said.
Giuliani predicted Netanyahu and Trump would have a “very, very good, collaborative relationship”, as opposed to what he described as the “hostile relationship” between former president Barack Obama and the Israeli leader.
The changed atmosphere was already evident in the first week of Trump’s tenure. While construction plans beyond Israel’s 1967 border were a recurring source of friction with the Obama administration, Trump was silent this week as Israeli officials approved plans for 2 500 housing units in the West Bank and hundreds of apartments in eastern Jerusalem.
Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s executive committee, called the building plans a “flagrant violation of international law” and accused Israel of exploiting the inauguration of the new US administration “to escalate its violations and the prevention of any existence of a Palestinian state”.
Trump considered Giuliani for attorney general and secretary of state before ultimately naming him to head a committee on cybersecurity. Giuliani said he discussed the issue with Netanyahu and other Israeli officials this week and would return in a few months for more substantive talks on the subject. — Bloomberg