As the failed policies of the Obama Administration are stricken from the record books, even his former cronies are denouncing the ex-president’s diplomatic faux pas.
Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro has gone on the record saying that the move to transfer the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is likely to lead to peace in the region.
Despite the full legislative authority and available funding, presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama failed to make good on their campaign promises to relocate the U.S. embassy. All three repeatedly postponed the lawful move under the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 until Pres. Donald J. Trump took decisive action.
Shapiro, an Obama appointee and confidante, has gone on the record with multiple news sources stating that the ex-president’s policies were wrong-headed. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict expert has also stated that Pres. Trump’s decision would be a major step toward stability.
In an essay published by outlets as far left as CNN, the former diplomat wrote that Pres. Trump’s embassy move is “recognizing a reality, and, in a sense, correcting a long-held historical anachronism. The shattering of this taboo is useful in its own right. But it also helps return the search for a resolution to this conflict to its origins.” Shapiro calls the move an “overdue step.”
“Moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem will help strengthen the principle that Israel’s claim to the city, born of centuries of Jewish connection to the city, is legitimate and must be recognized. It probably should have been long ago,” he wrote.
Although prominent Democrats widely supported the 1995 measure to empower Pres. Clinton to relocate the embassy, three consecutive administrations deferred. However, the Obama Administration appeared to abandon Israel as a friend and strategic ally.
The recent exit from the Iran Nuclear Deal, coupled with Pres. Trump’s unwavering support of Israel, has helped surface documents outlining Obama-era failures.
Reports are coming to light that the John Kerry-led State Department believed they were on course to broker a lasting peace deal between PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Whether they were self-delusional or not remains to be seen, but nothing could be further from the truth.
Memos now being published highlight that the Obama Administration rejected Netanyahu’s demands that any and all Jews “in place” in Palestine would enjoy the full rights of Arab citizens. According to memos published by the Jewish Post, Israelis enjoying full rights was said to be “inconsistent with U.S. policy and therefore unacceptable” to the Obama Administration.
The Jewish Post reports that Obama officials expected Israelis would either relocate or be “forcibly removed” from the proposed Palestine State in 2014.
Under Pres. Obama, American tax dollars were funneled to Palestinians and their families that engaged in anti-Semitic education, acts of aggression and terrorism.
Despite Pres. Obama and former Secretary of State John Kerry effectively siding with the Palestinians, they did so while treating Jerusalem as the capitol of Israel.
When Obama made a rare visit to Israel in 2013, he stayed at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. Each U.S. Secretary of State also stayed in the holy city when engaged in talks with diplomatic counterparts, including Kerry. Shapiro admits in his CNN-published article that past administrations played fast and loose with reality.
“Jerusalem had always been Israel’s capital, and we have always treated it functionally, if not formally, as such,” Shapiro wrote. “When I served as the U.S. Ambassador at our embassy in Tel Aviv, nearly every day I would be driven to Jerusalem to conduct affairs of state with the Israeli government at the Prime Minister’s office, the Foreign Ministry, and the Knesset.”
Although brokering a peace deal could be far down the road, recognizing Israel’s true capitol and moving the embassy there highlights American interests first and foremost. Israel, not Palestine, enjoys close ties with the United States. This positioning lets the Middle East players know that the Obama-era of “strategic patience” has formally ended.
While Palestinians do violence in the streets after suffering the political defeat, even a Democrat-insider such as Shapiro confesses Pres. Trump made the right call. “…the overdue step of locating the US Embassy in Jerusalem can actually bring closer the day when the issue long deemed the hardest in the conflict to solve may in fact become the most obvious. And that would only advance the cause of achieving a conflict-ending deal.”
~ Liberty Planet
