“Thank you, President Trump,” Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu proclaimed, “for having the courage to keep your promises!” Netanyahu declared the opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem as a “great day for Israel, a great day for America,” but also “a great day for peace.”
Trump pre-empted the praise with his own prerecorded speech for the ceremony, declaring that “it’s been a long time coming,” and “that for many years, we failed to acknowledge the obvious”:
“This city and this entire nation is a testament to the unbreakable spirit of the Jewish people,” he said. “The United States will always be a great friend of Israel.”
The president went on to express his hope for peace in the region in the video message.
“We extend a hand in friendship to Israel, to Palestinians and to all of their neighbors. May there be peace. May God bless this embassy. May God bless all who serve there, and may God bless the United States of America,” Trump said.
Netanyahu followed Trump’s presentation with a longer address, in which he also personally thanked Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. Continuing on a personal reflection, Netanyahu recalled his boyhood days in this same neighborhood, long before it got built up into its modern form. He told the crowd that his mother warned him not to wander too far into the neighborhood as it sat near the green line, and its streets were exposed to sniper fire. “What a difference!” Netanyahu proclaimed:
“We are here in Jersualem,” Netanyahu declared, “and we are here to stay!” That’s been obvious for decades, even as outside militaries and terror groups have tried to push Israel off its land and out of its capital. After the 1967 war, in which Jordan and Syria both lost territory (West Bank and Golan Heights, respectively) after attempting to relieve Egypt by opening new fronts in the east, it’s been clear that Israel (a) saw that territory as a necessary buffer after three separate attempts by Arab nations to invade through them, and (b) would never go back to agreeing that Jerusalem was an “open city.” Pretending otherwise made everyone look foolish and perpetuated false hopes in the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
As Jeff B noted earlier today, the most virtuous aspect of Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is the discarding of 50 years of ignoring reality:
I grudgingly hand it to Trump – never in 100yrs did I think the U.S. Israeli embassy would actually be moved to Jerusalem per his campaign promise but by gum he went and did it and demonstrated how pointless the longstanding refusal to acknowledge reality on the ground there was.
As Trump himself said, we refused to acknowledge the obvious for more than fifty years. It’s possible that this will exacerbate tensions and make peace more difficult to achieve, but … what has the fifty years of fantasy diplomacy achieved? We still have Mahmoud Abbas spouting nonsensical genealogical arguments to paint the entire state of Israel as illegitimate and no movement at all on numerous peace proposals offered by previous administrations that played along with Abbas’ nuttiness.
We’ve tried pretending for fifty years. Maybe a hard dose of reality is worth trying at this point. It certainly couldn’t do any worse.
Jerusalem is Israel’s capital. By finally recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the United States has chosen fact over fiction. And fact is the only true foundation for a just and lasting peace. https://t.co/u4wNzgrYP4
And count Chuck Schumer as one of the people cheering Trump in this instance:
Schumer: In a long overdue move, we have moved our embassy to Jerusalem. Every nation should have the right to choose its capital. I sponsored legislation to do this two decades ago, and I applaud President Trump for doing it.
The so-called Palestinians have always been the problem:
But, as already indicated, not only did the Palestinian leadership reject the partition plan, the Arab states and Great Britain also objected to it, although they were certainly capable of inducing the Palestinian Arabs to accept the scheme. Britain not only objected to the UN partition resolution, it also refused to help implement it or even to permit UN observers to prepare the ground for the partition - rejecting official UN requests. This British refusal was largely motivated by self-interest - to avoid damaging its relations with the Arab states that had overwhelmingly rejected the 1947 partition. Furthermore, the Arab states - and the Arab League - had, in early 1947, already started military preparations to prevent the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. In late 1947, a pan-Arab “Liberation Army,” comprising volunteers from several Arab nations and commanded by regular Arab military officers, invaded Palestine in order “to nullify the UN partition resolution, to eliminate any remains of Zionism.... and to secure the Arabness of Palestine.” Simultaneously, irregular Palestinian Arab militiamen waged armed attacks on Jewish towns, villages and inter-city traffic. The Jewish Haganah and the “Irgun” retaliated. A civil war broke out in Palestine, which turned into an Arab-Israeli war on May 14, 1948, when the creation of the State of Israel was proclaimed and several Arab armies invaded Palestine. Initially, the survival of the newly born Jewish state was in jeopardy but eventually Israel defeated the Arab armies and the Palestinian militias and occupied more land than had been allocated to it by the 1947 UN resolution.. For the Palestinian Arab community, this constituted a grave disaster (Nakba). About half of this community fled or was driven out by Israeli troops and became refugees in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Syria and elsewhere.
The so-called Palestinians have always been the problem:
Whoa! Hold on there Wyatt Earp.
The area of the British Mandate was known as Palestine for a reason. The vast majority of the population were Palestinians -- -- -- until the Jews started migrating in from Europe in the 40's.
Which led to a number of conflicts between the two. Which caused Britain to throw up it's hands and turn the whole thing over to the UN to split up the two sides.
I don't see how you can possibly conclude the Palestinians were "always the problem" when it was the Jewish settlers moving into Palestine that caused the conflict. Everyone knew they couldn't live together, so UN 181 split them up.
There are no Palestinians. It is a region. Israel was willing to accept the resolution. The Arabs were not. They started war. When you lose a war, you lose territory -- mainly because you don't want to be attacked again from that territory.
