BICOM

The US and Israel publicly exchanged views over the weekend on the impact of relocating the US Embassy to Jerusalem on the peace process.

A week before US President Donald Trump is scheduled to visit Israel, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in an interview to NBC: “The president, I think rightly, has taken a very deliberative approach to understanding the issue itself, listening to input from all interested parties in the region, and understanding what such a move, in the context of a peace initiative, what impact would such a move have.”

In response, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem would boost peace efforts by impressing on the Palestinians the city is the capital of the Jewish state.

A statement from the Prime Minister’s office read: “Israel’s position has been stated many times to the American administration and to the world. Moving the American embassy to Jerusalem would not harm the peace process. On the contrary, it would advance it by correcting an historical injustice and by shattering the Palestinian fantasy that Jerusalem is not the capital of Israel.”

The head of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition partners, Education Minister Naftali Bennett, leader of Jewish Home, also responded to Tillerson on twitter: “I call on the Prime Minister to make it clear that we expect the US administration to move the embassy to Jerusalem and to recognise united Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty.”

The Prime Minister’s office shortly after released a separate statement directed at Bennett: “We congratulate Bennett for scrupulously learning by heart the statements to the press that are issued by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and quoting them as if they were his own demands. That is what he has done on numerous subjects and he is doing the same with respect to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s consistent demand to move the American embassy to Jerusalem.”

June 1 is the expiration date on the presidential order, last signed by President Barack Obama, freezing implementation of the 1995 US law calling for the move of the embassy to Jerusalem. By then, President Trump will have to decide whether to renew the order or refrain from signing it, which would launch implementation of the law.

Tillerson’s remarks were the first time that a senior figure in the President Trump administration has publicly raised the possibility that moving the embassy to Jerusalem could harm the new administration’s aspirations to renew the peace process and reaching an Israeli-Palestinian agreement.

Tomorrow, the new American ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, will present his credentials to President Reuven Rivlin. At this stage it is understood that Friedman will work out of the US Embassy building in Tel Aviv and will live in the Ambassador’s residence in Herzliya, despite earlier reports which suggested that he planned to reside in Jerusalem.

Jerusalem’s status is one of the most emotionally charged issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with both sides laying claims. Israel captured East Jerusalem — claimed by Palestinians for the capital of a future independent state — from Jordan in the 1967 war and annexed it, a move not internationally recognised.