In Jerusalem, trilingual English, Hebrew, and Arabic signs have already gone up directing drivers and pedestrians to the new U.S. Embassy to Israel, which is due to open on Monday, the 70th anniversary of Israel’s independence. Meanwhile, Israelis in Tel Aviv say that last week they saw a convoy of trucks moving equipment and supplies from the current U.S. Embassy, located in Tel Aviv. Palestinians openly talk about protests, which will be anything but spontaneous: Posters in Ramallah (where I visited yesterday), the administrative headquarters of the Palestinian Authority, openly call for demonstrations.
Both Israelis and Palestinians expect them to be violent.
Veteran U.S. diplomats, their European counterparts, and the U.N. all oppose the move. So too does the Reform Jewish movement, which increasingly conflates religion with partisan politics and declared their opposition to the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Each describes the embassy move as a provocation that could derail the peace process.
Nonsense. Any conceivable peace agreement is going to confirm Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, even if it also awards any new Palestinian state part of the city to be its own capital as well. To refuse to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is not neutral: Rather, it endorses Palestinian rejectionism of any Jewish claim to Jerusalem or, for that matter, Israel itself. Israel’s parliament is in Jerusalem, as is pretty much every ministry with the exception of defense. The notion that countries would ignore Israel’s recognition of Jerusalem as its capital is, on its face, ridiculous; it’s akin to countries refusing to recognize Washington, D.C., as America’s capital and instead putting their diplomats in Dover, Del.
But, just as President Trump seems intent on unwinding President Barack Obama’s legacy, it is a near certainty that Trump’s next Democratic successor will try to reverse Trump’s legacy. Trump moves the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem? Well, why not unilaterally return it to Tel Aviv in the name of “peace”? Europeans will applaud and foreign policy elites will describe a return to sanity. Palestinians will describe the decision to return to the past status quo as a step in the right direction. Indeed, the fact that a new permanent U.S. Embassy has yet to be built in Jerusalem will make things easy for a new administration, as it can claim it is simultaneously saving tens of millions of dollars.
This is why Trump must pair the embassy move with the sale of the parcel of land in Tel Aviv on which the U.S. Embassy has sat for decades. Anyone who has ever been to Israel knows that the U.S. Embassy is both on prime beachfront property and, ironically, one of the ugliest embassies the State Department has ever had (think Camden, N.J., meets East German brutalism). While the State Department has for years dictated basic security parameters for its embassies — double walls with a court yard in between, offset from the street — the embassy in Tel Aviv is an exception: It is sandwiched between two busy streets and is surrounded by high-rise buildings. If the property were sold, it could bring tens of millions and perhaps even more than $100 million overnight: Any investor would snatch it up to build yet another high-rise hotel in its place. That money could return to U.S. government coffers to help finance the new embassy’s construction.
It would also make an embassy return to the property impossible.
As for maintaining it as a consulate for Tel Aviv? This, too, is a waste of money. When Israel’s new fast train between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem is completed later this year, the two cities will be less than a half hour apart. To maintain a consulate wholly separate from the embassy in Jerusalem would be akin to placing an embassy in Washington and then having a complete separate office in Rockville, Md. If Israelis want visas to the United States, they can make the half-hour train journey or, if they dislike public transportation, take the hour-long drive instead.
Trump is right to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, but he should not underestimate the tendentiousness of the foreign policy elites who resent his attack on their conventional wisdom. The clock will already be ticking on the U.S. Embassy’s return to Tel Aviv unless Trump makes that impossible. Mr. Trump, tear down the old embassy.
Michael Rubin (@Mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Pentagon official.
