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Moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem Is Not a "Concession" to Israel

(Politico) Shalom Lipner - While Israelis believe unabashedly that all foreign missions should be situated in Jerusalem, they largely reject any portrayal of moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem as some form of "concession" to Israel. Few would be willing to proffer any substantial quid in return for what is regarded as little more than a symbolic quo. From an Israeli perspective, moving the U.S. Embassy would simply correct an injustice and affirm existing reality. Jerusalem hosts world leaders on a daily basis. If anything, it is members of the diplomatic corps who would be the primary beneficiaries of the embassy's relocation, spared the need to travel back and forth from Tel Aviv to conduct their official business. Nothing prevents the U.S. from promoting its consulate in Arnona - a neighborhood in uncontested, western Jerusalem - to embassy class. When successive U.S. administrations pretend that Tel Aviv is the capital of Israel - or that Israel has no capital at all - they merely insult their Israeli friends. The writer, a nonresident senior fellow of the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, served at the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem from 1990 to 2016.
2017-05-23 00:00:00
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