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WASHINGTON DC: Presumed Democratic candidate Joe Biden said he will keep the United States Embassy in Jerusalem if he is elected president later this year.
This despite calling President Donald Trump’s decision to relocate the Tel Aviv embassy “shortsighted and frivolous.”
In 1995, while a Senator from Delaware, Biden supported the Jerusalem Embassy Act, overwhelmingly adopted by both the Senate and the House of Representatives, which recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and asked that the city remain “undivided “
But the law allowed the president to invoke and reissue a six-month exemption for “national security reasons.”
The resignation was repeatedly renewed by Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.
Trump signed the waiver in June 2017, before the Senate passed a resolution reaffirming the Jerusalem Embassy Law and asking the president to comply with its provisions.
Trump then recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and ordered the relocation of the embassy, which was completed in May 2018.
Michael O’Hanlon, a member of the Brookings Institute and Biden’s informal adviser on defense matters, said there is no point in revisiting the embassy’s question.
“Reversing a move already made is, in fact, different from preferring to delay it in the first place,” O’Hanlon told Arab News. “I don’t know how the US can get influence over Israel these days.”
Moving the embassy back to Tel Aviv “might not even be sustainable for a US president, since we could end up changing from one president to another,” he said.
“I tend to agree with Biden: What is done is done. But I am also frustrated by the inability of the United States to persuade Israel to be reasonable in the peace process and the two-state solution.”
During a virtual fundraiser, Biden said the embassy move should have occurred in the context of “a broader agreement to help us achieve important peace concessions in the process,” reiterating his support for a “two-solution.” state”.
Despite the fact that Trump’s Middle East peace plan, launched in January, revealed a two-state solution, it gave Israel full control of Jerusalem and the West Bank, allowing it to annex 30 percent of the Palestinian territories there. . It also rejected the right of return for Palestinian refugees.
