Posted on 12/05/2017 4:03:01 AM PST by Michael van der Galien
Wait. It comes as a surprise to President Trump that many world leaders, especially from the Middle East, oppose him recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's historic and undivided capital?
Facing dark warnings of a historic misstep and widespread unrest, US President Donald Trump on Monday delayed a decision on whether to recognize Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and move the US embassy there.
The White House said Trump would miss a deadline to decide on shifting the embassy from Tel Aviv, after a frantic 48 hours of public warnings from allies and private phone calls between world leaders.
When he was running for president, Trump promised voters he would recognize Jerusalem as Israel's eternal and undivided capital. He would also, he said, move the American embassy to that city (from Tel Aviv).
He has now been president for almost one year. If he wanted to do it, he could've done this on his first day in office.
White House spokesman Hogan Gidley says:
The president has been clear on this issue from the get-go: It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when.
Oh, and why is that? The "when" doesn't matter one bit. Those who oppose this move won't change their mind next year. Or the year after. Or anytime else in the coming 100 years for that matter.
If Trump truly wants to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital -- if that wasn't an election gimmick -- there's no reason whatsoever to "wait" to do so. Nothing will or can happen in the coming years to change the minds of those who oppose it...
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...
Objectively pointing out the obvious flaws in a proposal to move a U.S. embassy into a disputed region somehow amounts to "leftwing, Hate-Israel talking points?"
Right.
I've been around here a long time. I made the point about the quarterly fundraisers because I've seen a lot of good, principled conservatives driven away by that kind of attitude over the years.
Donald Trump is the President of the United States now because he promised to put America first. He won the election last year by laying waste to globalists on both sides of the aisle who are owned by foreign interests.
Under Tillerson the US has INCREASED the amount it gives the PLO
and cut in half the amount it was giving Egypt.
More leftwing, Alinsky type non sequiturs.
Whatever, dude.
Trump knuckles under to the dictator Ergodan’s threat. Terrible.
After Trump stocked his Administration with the same old Council on Foreign Relations/Goldman-Sachs crowd, it was easy to predict Trump would break this campaign promise.
Yup.
I've been around here a long time, too. And the only people I've seen driven off are those who try to avoid conflict with the left's narrative, like you just did.
As is often the case, Donald Trump has been all over the map on this one.
That's not a criticism, by the way. It's understandable why someone wouldn't want to make any serious commitments in an intractable situation.
Everything I've said here reflects long-standing U.S. policy under multiple administrations and in multiple foreign policy situations -- dating all the way back to World War II. And it's based on all the objective reasons why that policy is in place.
In fact, the legal and diplomatic situation with Jerusalem is very similar to what the U.S. faced with the partition of Berlin before the reunification of East and West Germany.
And your precedent for believing this is anything but a fantasy, given historic events, is...?
It SHOULD be a "serious priority" for the United States in that it sends a clear message from America to Arab polities that the days of negotiating away "real assets" for "promises" are over.
This country destroys the lives of ITS OWN CITIZENS for symbolic displays of prejudice, but we bully the victim when state actors make REAL threats for not bowing to their REAL prejudices?
Thus answering your own question vis a vis "the left's narrative."
The United States shouldn't be negotiating ANYTHING over there when it comes to territorial disputes. We can broker a deal among various parties and protect our own interests accordingly (like we did at Camp David when we insisted that Israel must return the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt), but the disputing parties have to be on the same page.
This country destroys the lives of ITS OWN CITIZENS for symbolic displays of prejudice, but we bully the victim when state actors make REAL threats for not bowing to their REAL prejudices?
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Can you elaborate?
Doesn’t want to lose the support of the “palaeos,” I suppose.
So . . . you're another of those people who think there's a different "gxd" and a different "one true religion" for every single country, huh?
Can't have a single G-d ruling the entire world. That would be "globalism."
Yet we do, so your assertion is moot.
Can you elaborate?
When we put pressure on Israel at the behest of Arab states that are not even contiguous with Israel, "bullying the victim" is EXACTLY what we're doing.
Of course there’s a single God ruling the entire world. I’m not sure what that has to do with anything.
Didn't Donald Trump campaign on a promise to get the U.S. out of these pointless, expensive foreign entanglements?
When we put pressure on Israel at the behest of Arab states that are not even contiguous with Israel, "bullying the victim" is EXACTLY what we're doing.
That would be a fair point. Can you give an example of this?
Not the way you are "trying" to define them (and don't think I don't see your attempt to conflate Donald Trump's campaigning with Founding Fathers). He explicitly campaigned on exactly this point, so your rather fallacious attempt at "special pleading" seems rather disingenuous.
That would be a fair point. Can you give an example of this?
THE EMBASSY!
Is there any other country where we don't put our embassy in the nation's declared capital? Not putting our embassy there communicates agreement that the capital's status is tentative!
Why are we agreeing to that? It ain't like we couldn't move an embassy if something changes.
See Post #29.
Is there any other country where we don't put our embassy in the nation's declared capital? Not putting our embassy there communicates agreement that the capital's status is tentative!
1. We didn't put an embassy in East Germany during the Cold War. We recognized Berlin as the capital of a unified Germany, but the U.S. embassy building that was there up until World War II actually ended up just inside the Soviet-occupied East Berlin. We put our West German embassy in Bonn while the two countries existed separately. We maintained a "diplomatic mission" in Berlin to reaffirm the standing U.S. policy of supporting a reunified Germany at some undetermined point of time in the future.
2. I hate to break this to you, but for now the capital's status IS tentative. The standing U.S. policy on this issue is laid out in the Declaration of Principles (1993) and the Interim Agreement (1995) on Palestine, which describe Jerusalem's status as "undetermined" at this time. Israel is a signatory to those agreements.
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