Trump To Block Moving U.S. Embassy To Jerusalem In New Flip-Flop

U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv

By Nathan Guttman June 1, 2017

Breaking a campaign promise that had excited pro-Israel activists, President Trump has reportedly decided to sign a waiver postponing the relocation of the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

Senior administration officials told CNN on Wednesday that Trump will follow the path of his predecessors and sign the biannual waiver on Thursday to postpone the implementation of the Jerusalem Embassy Act, which mandates that the embassy must be in Jerusalem.

They stressed, however, that Trump has not given up on his promise to relocate the embassy and still intends to do so when conditions are ripe. “It will be when, not if,” one official told CNN.

The bill, which was passed nearly unanimously in 1995, requires the State Department to relocate the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, in an move seen as an attempt to bolster Israel’s claim over the city, which it designates as its capital. But ever since, presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama used the waiver option to postpone implementation due to national security reasons.

The otherwise dormant issue came to a head following Trump’s campaign promise to immediately move the embassy.

Now, with the previous waiver stands to expire on June 1, Trump has been forced into making a decision.

Contact Nathan Guttman at guttman@forward.com or on Twitter @nathanguttman

Nathan Guttman, staff writer, was the Forward’s Washington bureau chief. He joined the staff in 2006 after serving for five years as Washington correspondent for the Israeli dailies Haaretz and The Jerusalem Post. In Israel, he was the features editor for Ha’aretz and chief editor of Channel 1 TV evening news. He was born in Canada and grew up in Israel. He is a graduate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

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