JERUSALEM NAMED CAPITAL
President Trump will announce U.S. recognition of contested city as Israel’s capital.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump plans today to upend decades of U.S. policy by formally recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and ordering the relocation of the U.S. Embassy to that city, senior aides said, a decision that could derail the White House’s peace efforts and spark regional unrest.
Trump will make his pronouncement in a midday speech after months of deliberation within his administration and consultations with governments in the Middle East. But White House aides emphasized that Trump will sign another six-month waiver maintaining the embassy’s current location in Tel Aviv because the process of moving it will take at least three or four years.
The president began informing his counterparts in the region of his decision Tuesday, prompting warnings from several countries that the move would inflame Muslims and disrupt progress toward a peace deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians. U.S. allies in Europe, including France, also have opposed such a change in policy.
“Our president said, ‘You don’t have anything that would make up for this on Jerusalem,’ “said Nabil Shaath, an adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas who said Abbas had personally briefed him on the call. Abbas told Trump that he would “not accept it” and warned that the president was “playing into the hands of extremism.”
But Trump “just went on saying he had to do it,” Shaath said.
In Riyadh, the Saudi Press Agency, using the Arabic name for Jerusalem, said King Salman bin Abdul Aziz warned Trump “that such a dangerous step of relocation or recognition of Al-Quds as the capital of Israel would constitute a flagrant provocation of Muslims, all over the world.”