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The U.S. Embassy Is Moving to Jerusalem...and the World Won't End

(JNS) Jonathan S. Tobin - On Friday, the Trump administration said the ceremony converting a U.S. consulate in Jerusalem into an embassy would coincide with Israel's 70th birthday celebrations in May. Unlike Trump's initial announcement recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital, the reaction to this latest one turned out to be substantially low-key. By creating a fact on the ground that does nothing to impede a theoretical peace agreement, the U.S. has exposed the hollow nature of the anti-Israel consensus that holds that any Western recognition of reality that forces the Palestinians to give up their illusions is inadmissible. If peace is ever to come, it will be built on realism, not on the appeasement of Palestinian fantasies. The world held off on recognizing western Jerusalem as Israel's capital in part because of the expectation that a peace treaty was inevitable. The problem with waiting was that holding off only served to reinforce Palestinian rejectionism. To this day, the supposedly moderate Palestinian Authority continues to deny Jewish ties to the city, or that the Temple Mount and the Western Wall are ancient Jewish holy places. In that sense, they are little better than their Hamas rivals. By holding off recognition of Israel's capital, the world ensured that the Palestinians were not forced to rethink their rejectionist political culture. Yet it has been the willingness of everyone else to indulge Palestinian fantasies that has been the problem. Nothing Trump is doing precludes the possibility of a two-state solution. But peace will have to await a sea change in Palestinian culture that will make it possible for their leaders to choose peace, rather than, as Abbas has consistently done, to pander to religious and nationalist fantasies that preclude it.
2018-02-27 00:00:00
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