President-elect Donald Trump isn’t backing out of his commitment to moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem anytime soon.
In an interview with nationally syndicated radio host Hugh Hewitt, his former campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, said the move is still a “very big priority” to the president-elect. She said she has heard him repeat the objective several times since after last month’s election.
“It is something that our friend Israel, a great friend in the Middle East, would appreciate, and something that a lot of Jewish-Americans have expressed their preference for,” she said. “It is a great move. It is an easy move to do based on how much he talked about that in the debates and in the sound bites.
“People think it’s just marriage, abortion or religious liberties—and of course it’s about all that—but it’s also about a strong Middle East and about protecting Israel. Evangelical Christians always have Israel at the top of their list when you ask what’s most important to them.”
In 1995, Congress passed a law that declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel and established it as the location for the U.S. Embassy. But over the 21 years since, every president has signed the necessary six-month waivers, citing national security issues, to prevent the move from going forward.
The Republican-led Congress has toyed with the idea to remove the national security obstruction from the 1995 law. The 2016 GOP platform declares Jerusalem as the eternal capital of an undivided Israel, and during the general election campaign, Trump said such a move would happen “fairly quickly” if he were to be elected.
Such a move would undoubtedly anger the Palestinians, potentially leading to renewed violence within Israel. The Jewish nation-state declared Jerusalem as its capital in 1950, but very few countries have been willing to recognize it for fear of igniting violence or becoming the target of radical Islamic terrorism. {eoa}
