Yes, let's rile up the Middle East masses for no good reason.
The US is planning to move its Israel embassy to Jerusalem within three months, pressing ahead far earlier than previously announced, reports the Financial Times.
“We’re planning to open the new US embassy to Israel in Jerusalem in May,” a State department spokesman told FT, adding that the opening will be timed to coincide with Israel’s 70th anniversary.
FT correctly notes:
The move, reversing decades of US policy, will anger many American allies in the region who fear it will stoke unrest and fuel extremism across the Middle East. It is also likely to undermine Mr Trump’s pledge to broker the “ultimate deal” to end the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The status of the divided city is one of the thorniest issues of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Israel regards Jerusalem as its undivided capital and claims sovereignty over the whole city. But most of the international community views East Jerusalem as occupied land and the Palestinians consider it their future capital. No other country has its embassy in Jerusalem.This completely violates the spirit of the wise guidance delivered by George Washington in his farewell address. He urged the American people to avoid long-term friendly relations or rivalries with any nation. He warned that alliances are likely to draw the United States into wars which have no justification and no benefit to the country beyond simply defending the favored nation. Alliances, he warns, often lead to poor relations with nations who feel that they are not being treated as well as America's allies, and threaten to influence the American government into making decisions based upon the will of their allies instead of the will of the American people.
-RW
Well, Mattis did say they didn’t have any more terrorist to keep them busy enough, so this actually makes sense, from an Empire point of view. Should create a whole new batch of “terrorist” if everything works out.
ReplyDeleteWhat you're saying Bob, is continue being overly solicitous (that is, "friendly") to the Arabs and hostile to Israel. This is not even about entangling alliances. Can you point to a single other example of a nation situating its embassy in a different city than the host's designated capital? The neutral stance is to locate all embassies in host countries in their capitals. Anything else is entangling and taking sides in squabbles not its business. Just because it has been the status quo for decades is no excuse.
ReplyDeleteIn any case, this is not a new building. All that is being done is changing some nameplates (the Jerusalem Consulate is magically transformed to the embassy and the Tel Aviv embassy is downgraded to a consulate) and shifting a few personnel around. The bulk of embassy activity will remain in Tel Aviv.
The bigger question is, why do we have embassies anywhere?
ReplyDeleteIt's called the Full Employment For Bureacrats Act.
DeleteI wish it were that innocuous. It seems to me that, among other things, the US embassies are military and covert action bases which are used to interfere in other countries.
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