President Donald Trump's decision Wednesday to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital
has temporarily derailed the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, two
senior White House officials acknowledged after Trump's speech.
The question now for those officials: For how long?
"We're
prepared for derailment -- temporary, I hope. Pretty sure it will be
temporary," said a senior White House official, who acknowledged that
the President's peace team has not spoken with furious Palestinian
officials since the Trump's announcement.
That
"derailment" was a cost the White House was prepared to accept to
fulfill Trump's campaign promise. And two senior White House officials
said they felt making the announcement now -- before Israelis and
Palestinians have reached the negotiating table -- would help mitigate
the damage to the peace process.
"A lot of people put their heads into
this decision to see how do we make this happen without at the same time
throwing the peace process out of the window," one of the officials
said.
"In
terms of a moment where it could happen, where it could be the least
disruptive at a moment in time, this is the moment," the second official
said. "We know there will be some short term pain, but think it will
help in the long run."
Trump's decision Wednesday to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital and direct
the State Department to begin moving the embassy there comes after
months during which Trump's peace team has focused on meeting with
Israelis and Palestinians, gathering ideas and building relationships.
Now, the officials said, they are in the midst of drafting a tentative
peace accord, but have yet to seek to draw both sides back to the
negotiating table.
But the move
left Palestinian officials fuming, with Palestinian Authority President
Mahmoud Abbas and his chief negotiator Saeb Erakat blasting the US
decision and claiming Trump's move "disqualified" the US from mediating
the peace process.
The White House
officials expressed hope that the Trump administration has built enough
trust with the Palestinians to push through the current friction, but
could not say when they believed the relationship would be patched up.
Trump's announcement on Jerusalem, which
bucked seven decades of US foreign policy, came amid a string of
setbacks for Palestinians, including a threat from the State Department
to close the Palestinian Liberation Organization's Washington office.
While
Trump had previously expressed a desire to hold off on moving the
embassy to gauge the prospects for peace, the officials said Trump
decided to move forward with the announcement because it will take
months before US officials know if the current process -- led by the
President's son-in-law Jared Kushner and his Special Representative for
International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt -- is likely to bear fruit.
And
while senior administration officials have expressed hope that the move
could help facilitate the peace process, two senior White House
officials acknowledged Wednesday that that was not a central goal.
"His
decision wasn't meant to help (the peace team). It was meant to do what
he chose to do, but it was also meant to respect his other goal which
is to reach a historic peace agreement," one senior White House official
said.
President Donald Trump told Israeli and Arab leaders on Tuesday that
he intends to move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, a decision
that breaks with decades of US policy and risks fueling violence in the
Middle East. Senior U.S. officials said Trump on Wednesday is expected
to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital while delaying relocating the
embassy from Tel Aviv for another six months, though he plans to order
his aides to immediately begin planning such a move. US endorsement of
Israel’s claim to all of Jerusalem as its capital would reverse
long-standing U.S. policy that the city’s status must be decided in
negotiations with the Palestinians, who want East Jerusalem as the
capital of their future state. The international community does not
recognize Israeli sovereignty over the entire city, home to sites holy
to the Muslim, Jewish and Christian religions. Palestinian President
Mahmoud Abbas, Jordan’s King Abdullah, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Saudi Arabia’s King Salman, who all received telephone calls
from Trump, joined a mounting chorus of voices warning that unilateral
US steps on Jerusalem would derail a fledgling US-led peace effort and
unleash turmoil in the region.click here for more.
The White House said that Trump had also spoken with Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a longtime proponent of a US embassy move
to Jerusalem. Netanyahu’s office did not respond to a request for
comment, but a senior Israeli minister welcomed Trump’s decision while
vowing that Israel would be prepared for any outbreak of violence. White
House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said that Trump, who promised during
the presidential campaign to move the embassy in Israel, would give a
speech on Wednesday about his Jerusalem decision. “The president I would
say is pretty solid in his thinking at this point,” she said, declining
to provide details. Trump notified Abbas “of his intention to move the
American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem,” Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu
Rdainah said.
Abbas, in response, “warned of the dangerous consequences such a
decision would have to the peace process and to the peace, security and
stability of the region and of the world” and also appealed to the Pope
and the leaders of Russia, France and Jordan to intervene. The Jordanian
monarch, whose dynasty is the custodian of the Muslim holy sites in
Jerusalem, told Trump that moving the embassy would have “dangerous
repercussions” for the region and would obstruct U.S. efforts to promote
Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, according to a palace statement.
King Salman stressed to Trump that any U.S. announcement on the
status of Jerusalem would “inflame Muslim feelings all over the world,”
the Saudi Press Agency said. None of the leaders’ statements said
whether Trump specified the timing of an embassy move, a notion
supported by successive governments in Israel, a close U.S. ally.
But U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Trump
was expected to sign a national security waiver – as have his
predecessors – keeping the embassy in Tel Aviv for another six months
but would commit to setting the move in motion. However, he was not
planning to set a specific timetable, the officials said. The Trump
administration would need time to overcome logistical issues such as
lack of a secure embassy building and staff housing in Jerusalem,
according to one U.S. official.
Trump appears intent on satisfying the pro-Israel, right-wing base,
including evangelical Christians, that helped him win the presidency but
was disappointed when he delayed the embassy move in June. No other
country has its embassy in Jerusalem. Israel captured Arab East
Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war and later annexed it, an action
not recognized internationally.
‘A BIG MISTAKE’
Israeli Intelligence Minister Israel Katz, who met last week with
U.S. officials in Washington, told Israel’s Army Radio: “My impression
is that the president will recognize Jerusalem, the eternal capital of
the Jewish people for 3,000 years, as the capital of the state of
Israel.” Asked whether Israel was preparing for a wave of violence if
Trump recognizes Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, he said: “We are
preparing for every option. Anything like that can always erupt. If Abu
Mazen (Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas) will lead it in that
direction then he will be making a big mistake.”
Islamist militant groups such as al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah have
in the past tried to exploit Muslim sensitivities over Jerusalem to
stoke anti-Israel and anti-U.S. sentiment. Asked whether Trump
recognized that his Jerusalem decision could spark violence, Sanders
said: “A number of things have been looked at that have been weighed
into the president’s decision.”
Senior U.S. officials told Reuters some officers in the State
Department were also deeply concerned and the European Union, the
Palestinian Authority, Saudi Arabia and the Arab League all warned that
any such declaration would have repercussions across the region. Turkey
threatened on Tuesday to cut diplomatic ties with Israel if Trump
recognizes Jerusalem.
Katz took to Twitter to reject Turkey’s threat and reiterate Israel’s
position on the city, which is one of a long list of stumbling blocks
in years of failed peace talks with the Palestinians. A U.S. official
said the consensus U.S. intelligence estimate on U.S. recognition of
Jerusalem as Israel’s capital was that it would risk triggering a
backlash against Israel, and also potentially against U.S. interests in
the Middle East.
It is also likely to upset an Israeli-Palestinian peace push led by
Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, in pursuit of what
the U.S. president has called the “ultimate deal.” The initiative has
made little progress. Read Turkey joins US allies in warning Trump over Jerusalem.
The White House said in a statement that in calls with Israeli and
Arab leaders, Trump “reaffirmed his commitment to advancing
Israeli-Palestinian peace talks” and “underscored the importance of
bilateral cooperation with each partner.” Arab criticism of Trump’s plan
contrasted sharply with the praise Washington’s traditional Arab allies
heaped on him at the beginning of his administration. They saw Trump as
re-engaging in the region after what they perceived as former President
Barack Obama’s distancing of himself from them, as well as taking a tougher stand against Iran.
The European Union’s top diplomat, Federica Mogherini, said on
Tuesday that “any action that would undermine” peace efforts to create
two separate states for the Israelis and the Palestinians “must
absolutely be avoided.”
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has “consistently warned
against any unilateral action that would have the potential to undermine
the two-state solution,” U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told
reporters in New York.
