In this crazy election season, respectable political norms have been upended, but at least one presidential campaign tradition remains intact. Every four years, White House candidates make a firm promise that if elected, they will move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. 2016 was no exception.
During the annual meeting of the American Committee on Israel in Washington last week Republican Party favorite Donald Trump was greeted with joy when he announced that as president, he would “move the American embassy to the eternal capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalem.” A few hours later, Texas Senator Ted Cruz not only he made the same promisebut said the process would begin on his “first day in office.” Ohio Gov. John Kasich, asked about the embassy on CNN, confirmed that he also wants the US embassy to be moved to the capital of Israel.
Jerusalem did not come up in Hillary Clinton’s AIPAC speech; on the other hand, she advocated for moving the embassy long before anyone thought about 2016. In 1999, while still first lady and planning her run for U.S. Senate, Clinton vowed to become “energetic, committed advocate“for moving the embassy from Tel Aviv. This was seven years after her husband, who ran his presidential campaign in New York, confirmed his support for Jerusalem “as an undivided city, the eternal capital of Israel and [for] “moving our embassy to Jerusalem.”
George W. Bush in 2000, John Kerry in 2004, John McCain in 2008 — although the appointments changed, the four-year promise to move the American Embassy in Israel to the country’s capital remained steadfast with the Old Believers.
But what is even more consistent is that no president has kept this promise once he takes office.
Candidates routinely make promises they have no intention of keeping. But moving the embassy in Israel to Jerusalem should be a no-brainer. The United States maintains nearly 190 embassies, one in virtually every country in the world. Each has an embassy in the capital of the host country. Israel is the only exception.
Washington has never formally recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. When asked what the country’s capital was, administration spokesmen tied themselves in knots to avoid answering. This is not only absurd, it is an insult to an ally. It is also a continuing act of appeasement of rejectors who oppose Jewish sovereignty over any part of the Jewish homeland. Such discriminatory treatment is abhorrent; it is why presidential candidates keep promising to fix it, and why the House and Senate overwhelmingly passed legislation more than a decade ago—the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995—requiring the embassy to be moved.
But nothing has changed. The waiver provision in the 1995 act authorizes the president to suspend relocation for six months if necessary “to protect the national security interests of the United States.” Every six months, with perfect regularity, every president since Bill Clinton has issued a waiver.
When pressed, the White House or State Department have said that moving the embassy would be tantamount to prejudging an issue that should be settled through negotiations. That might be possible if the U.S. embassy were to be established in East Jerusalem — which was occupied by Jordan from 1948 until it was liberated by Israel in the Six-Day War. But no one has ever suggested that the embassy move anywhere else West Jerusalem, the undisputed seat of Israel’s government since 1948.
Israel’s enemies do not oppose the placement of foreign embassies in Jerusalem because it would undermine diplomatic negotiations. They oppose it because it denies Israel’s claim to everyone part of Jerusalem, even parts that have always been Israeli sovereign territory. In other words, they deny that Israel’s very existence is a settled issue. Moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem would send one message, uncomplicated but significant: Americans do not view the survival of the Jewish state as a negotiable issue.
