'U.S. Embassy' Road Signs Go Up in Jerusalem Ahead of Next Week's Opening The signs, in English, Hebrew and Arabic, were installed by workmen close to the south Jerusalem location of the embassy when it is officially relocated on May 14 from Tel Aviv

JERUSALEM EMBASSY -- Invitations to the opening ceremony for the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem have been sent out by Ambassador David Friedman. The event is expected to take place on Monday, May 14 at 4:00PM Israel time (9:00 am EDT), according to an invite obtained by Jewish Insider. Yesterday, President Trump was asked by a reporter if he's planning to travel to Israel to attend the event. "I may. I may. I'm not sure," Trump replied. Earlier in the day, Netanyahu told Fox News, “[We] would love to have him here. It’s his decision. He’s got an open invitation.”

VIDEO AND TRANSCRIPT OF PRESIDENT TRUMP'S SPEECH ON JERUSALEM

PRESIDENT TRUMP:

Thank you. When I came into office, I promised to look at the world’s challenges with open eyes and very fresh thinking.

We cannot solve our problems by making the same failed assumptions and repeating the same failed strategies of the past. All challenges demand new approaches.

My announcement today marks the beginning of a new approach to conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

In 1995, Congress adopted the Jerusalem Embassy Act urging the federal government to relocate the American Embassy to Jerusalem and to recognize that that city, and so importantly, is Israel’s capital. This act passed congress by an overwhelming bipartisan majority. And was reaffirmed by unanimous vote of the Senate only six months ago.

Yet, for over 20 years, every previous American president has exercised the law’s waiver, refusing to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem or to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital city. Presidents issued these waivers under the belief that delaying the recognition of Jerusalem would advance the cause of peace. Some say they lacked courage but they made their best judgments based on facts as they understood them at the time. Nevertheless, the record is in.

After more than two decades of waivers, we are no closer to a lasting peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

It would be folly to assume that repeating the exact same formula would now produce a different or better result.

Therefore, I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

While previous presidents have made this a major campaign promise, they failed to deliver.

Today, I am delivering. I’ve judged this course of action to be in the best interests of the United States of America and the pursuit of peace between Israel and the Palestinians. This is a long overdue step to advance the peace process. And to work towards a lasting agreement.

Israel is a sovereign nation with the right, like every other sovereign nation, to determine its own capital. Acknowledging this is a fact is a necessary condition for achieving peace. It was 70 years ago that the United States under President Truman recognized the state of Israel.

Ever since then, Israel has made its capital in the city of Jerusalem, the capital the Jewish people established in ancient times.

Today, Jerusalem is the seat of the modern Israeli government. It is the home of the Israeli Parliament, the Knesset, as well as the Israeli Supreme Court. It is the location of the official residence of the prime minister and the president. It is the headquarters of many government ministries.

For decades, visiting American presidents, secretaries of State and military leaders have met their Israeli counterparts in Jerusalem, as I did on my trip to Israel earlier this year.

Jerusalem is not just the heart of three great religions, but it is now also the heart of one of the most successful democracies in the world. Over the past seven decades, the Israeli people have built a country where Jews, Muslims and Christians and people of all faiths are free to live and worship according to their conscience and according to their beliefs.

Jerusalem is today and must remain a place where Jews pray at the Western Wall, where Christians walk the stations of the cross, and where Muslims worship at Al Aqsa Mosque. However, through all of these years, presidents representing the United States have declined to officially recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. In fact, we have declined to acknowledge any Israeli capital at all.

But today we finally acknowledge the obvious. That Jerusalem is Israel’s capital. This is nothing more or less than a recognition of reality. It is also the right thing to do. It’s something that has to be done.

That is why consistent with the Jerusalem embassy act, I am also directing the State Department to begin preparation to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This will immediately begin the process of hiring architects, engineers and planners so that a new embassy, when completed, will be a magnificent tribute to peace.

In making these announcements, I also want to make one point very clear. This decision is not intended in any way to reflect a departure from our strong commitment to facilitate a lasting peace agreement.

We want an agreement that is a great deal for the Israelis and a great deal for the Palestinians. We are not taking a position of any final status issues including the specific boundaries of the Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem or the resolution of contested borders. Those questions are up to the parties involved.

The United States remains deeply committed to helping facilitate a peace agreement that is acceptable to both sides. I intend to do everything in my power to help forge such an agreement.

Without question, Jerusalem is one of the most sensitive issues in those talks. The United States would support a two-state solution if agreed to by both sides. In the meantime, I call on all parties to maintain the status quo at Jerusalem’s holy sites including the Temple Mount, also known as Haram al-Sharif. Above all, our greatest hope is for peace. The universal yearning in every human soul.

With today’s action, I reaffirm my administration’s longstanding commitment to a future of peace and security for the region. There will, of course, be disagreement and dissent regarding this announcement. But we are confident that ultimately, as we work through these disagreements, we will arrive at a peace and a place far greater in understanding and cooperation. This sacred city should call forth the best in humanity.

Lifting our sights to what is possible, not pulling us back and down to the old fights that have become so totally predictable.

Peace is never beyond the grasp of those willing to reach it.

So today we call for calm, for moderation, and for the voices of tolerance to prevail over the purveyors of hate. Our children should inherit our love, not our conflicts. I repeat the message I delivered at the historic and extraordinary summit in Saudi Arabia earlier this year: The Middle East is a region rich with culture, spirit, and history. Its people are brilliant, proud and diverse. Vibrant and strong.

But the incredible future awaiting this region is held at bay by bloodshed, ignorance and terror.

Vice President Pence will travel to the region in the coming days to reaffirm our commitment to work with partners throughout the Middle East to defeat radicalism that threatens the hopes and dreams of future generations.

It is time for the many who desire peace to expel the extremists from their midsts. It is time for all civilized nations and people to respond to disagreement with reasoned debate, not violence. And it is time for young and moderate voices all across the Middle East to claim for themselves a bright and beautiful future.

So today, let us rededicate ourselves to a path of mutual understanding and respect. Let us rethink old assumptions and open our hearts and minds to possible and possibilities.

And finally, I ask the leaders of the region political and religious, Israeli and Palestinian, Jewish and Christian and Muslim to join us in the noble quest for lasting peace.

Thank you. God bless you. God bless Israel. God bless the Palestinians and God bless the United States.

Thank you very much. Thank you.

Days of Media Rage about Jerusalem The bad arguments against recognizing Israel’s capital BY: Noah Pollak

I lived in Jerusalem, Israel, for two happy years, and much of my work since has involved U.S.-Israel relations. I should know better, yet still I am surprised at the rending of garments and apocalyptic predictions pouring forth from western pundits over something that will not change a single stone in the holy city, or a single person’s access to its holy sites, or a single border—and that overwhelming majorities of Congress and virtually every president and presidential candidate has endorsed for decades. Chalk it up in part to the hysteria that has characterized our political debates in the past two years, and also in part to the enormous influence that former Obama administration officials have in setting media narratives and frames for covering issues on which the current president repudiates the approach of the previous one. So here are some notes of calm, in no particular order:

1. One of the first arguments critics make against recognizing Jerusalem is that it would so anger the Palestinians that the peace process would never recover. But the Palestinians have rejected every offer of statehood, and have not been willing to engage in real talks with Israel since the Bush administration. They’re already unwilling to negotiate, and were especially unwilling during the Obama years, when the president was openly acting as their advocate. If they are so incensed that the United States is finally recognizing Jerusalem that they will never talk again, it tells us that a negotiated agreement was never possible in the first place.

2. Despite the likelihood of protests and perhaps violence in the next few days, U.S. recognition of Jerusalem will actually promote peace in the long run because it will help disabuse the Arab world of its fantasy of Israeli impermanence. It will also show Palestinians for the very first time that their rejectionism has costs, and that it will not permanently paralyze U.S. policy toward Israel. The cause of peace is weakened so long as the delusion of Israel’s impermanence is encouraged by U.S. policy.

3. Another argument common among Middle East pseudo-sophisticates is that recognizing Jerusalem would drive a wedge between Israel and the Arab states, right at the moment when the threat from Iran is bringing them together. This sounds plausible, but the opposite is probably true. The Arab states’ recent rapprochement with Israel is not ideological—it is expedient, because the Arabs are comparatively weak and are seeking protection from a stronger power. Israel’s embrace of U.S. recognition doesn’t change this reality. Indeed, by confidently demonstrating its willingness to assume risk, and by showing its closeness to America, Israel’s attractiveness to the Arab states who need its help against Iran only increases. Arab regimes will howl in public, but in private they understand that only a strong, focused country can protect them. And that understanding will draw them closer to Israel.

4. The most craven argument against recognition is that it will spark Arab violence. This argument is being aggressively promoted by former Obama administration officials and their media allies, and by Palestinian and Jordanian officials, who barely attempt to conceal their mau-mauing of western countries with threats of rioting and terrorism. The United States’ response to this tactic should be to tell them to pound sand. We cannot allow Middle East rent-a-mobs to exercise a veto over our foreign policy, especially not on an issue in which the threat of violence originates in the rank anti-Semitism of those who deny Jewish history and Jewish political rights in Israel. If the King of Jordan wants to send crowds of his subjects into the streets to riot, that is his problem. What has been pathetic and depressing to witness is the astounding number of western reporters and pundits who are happy to retail a messaging campaign that is barely distinguishable from blackmail.

5. Speaking of westerners who are happy to promote blackmail: The hypocrisy of their sudden concern for violence in the Middle East can only be described as shameless. The very same people—the Obama administration officials and their media and think tank friends—who made endless excuses for doing nothing about the mass slaughter in Syria, or Iran’s takeover of Iraq and fueling of war in Yemen, and who cheered the nuclear deal with Iran, which filled the coffers of the leading state sponsor of terror with billions and put it on a glide path to nuclear weapons—these very same people are now so concerned about peace and stability in the Middle East that they need fainting couches over a speech that recognizes Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. How stupid do they think we are?

A final thought: what to make of the hysterics from the peace-process guild, that class of Washington analysts, diplomats, and former officials who have made careers of attempting to broker Israeli-Palestinian peace? Their supercilious denunciations of Trump’s announcement mask an undercurrent of fear – fear for the loss of their own status. They understand, I think, that for them, recognizing Jerusalem represents much more than an isolated policy change. It raises fundamental questions about a cherished multi-decade American diplomatic project, one that has been a pillar of Democratic Party foreign policy since the early 1990s.

Through three administrations, the script and the goals have remained the same: America brokers talks in which the parties reach compromises on the issues of Jerusalem, borders, refugees, settlements, and security, at which point an agreement is signed and everyone involved receives the Nobel Peace Prize and recognition in history as consequential statesmen. Needless to say, this script hasn’t worked. There is not a single issue on which the two sides have ever come close to reaching an agreement.

But for the peace process guild, that is not a problem. The important thing is to keep trying, to remain guardians of the issue, and to treat alternative approaches with so much contempt and ridicule that they are never given serious consideration.

In recognizing Jerusalem, Trump is showing that this tired script need not be followed—and that this tired guild need not be obeyed. The peace process community correctly recognizes that Trump’s announcement is not just a policy change, but an attack on their authority. And so they wish for it to fail, and one senses based on their breathless tweeting over the past few days that many in this community would experience enormous schadenfreude should the coming days be marked by rioting and terror. Any other outcome makes them look like fearmongers, and delegitimizes the other counsel they dispense.

If a president can show that adherence to the traditional confines of the peace process is unnecessary on Jerusalem, why can’t he do it on other issues? Trump’s announcement is not significant in terms of changing facts on the ground, because Jerusalem has always been Israel’s capital. But it may be quite significant for the network of experts, think tanks, journalists, politicians, diplomats, and ex-officials who have so much vanity and prestige invested in protecting a failed understanding of the region.

ELDER OF ZIYON: Partial list of how "catastrophic" moving the embassy would be, according to Muslim leaders (and John Kerry)

Here' a partial list of the dire warnings being given by Muslim leaders in recent days over the idea of moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, within the areas that the world supposedly agrees is part of Israel.

"The world will pay the price" for any change in Jerusalem's status.	Abbas adviser Mahmoud Habash
Will prolong tensions, chaos and violence	Abbas spokesman
Endangers the stability of the Middle East and the whole world	Arab League
It will nourish fanaticism and violence	Arab League
Stir tensions in the region	Egypt
Wiill unleash forces that cannot be contained	Hanan Ashrawi
Inflame sentiments and generating tensions and instability throughout the region and beyond	Hanan Ashrawi
Would transform into a religious issue	Hanan Ashrawi
Trigger anger across the Arab and Muslim world	Jordan
Would  strengthen terror organizations in the Middle East.	Jordan's King Abdullah
Will be exploited by terrorists to stoke anger, frustration and desperation in order to spread their ideologies	Jordan's King Abdullah
Assassinating and destroying the peace process, completely.	Mustafa Barghouti
Will inflame the entire region	Nabil Shaath, Abbas advisor
Would heighten tensions in the region	Saudi Arabia
Cause a catastrophe	Turkish government
Destroy the peace process	Turkish government
Major catastrophe	Turkish government
New conflicts, disputes, and unrest in the region	Turkish government
Would not benefit Israel or any other country	Turkish government

There's one more quote that should be mentioned. Moving the embassy would cause “an explosion, an absolute explosion in the region, not just in the West Bank, and perhaps even in Israel itself, but throughout the region,.” according to John Kerry in 2016.

Kerry's quote is important because it shows how thoroughly Western diplomats have swallowed Arab threats as being sacrosanct, rather than eye them critically - the entire job of a seasoned diplomat.

The over the top rhetoric shows yet again that this is how Muslim leaders use fear and threats  as part of their normal way of doing politics. Kerry's echoing those threats - and in fact, exaggerating them - shows that too many Westerners who should know better suffer from what Richard Landes calls "proleptic dhimmitude" - a condition where Westerners take what they believe to be pro-Muslim positions, even beyond what the Muslims themselves say in many cases, in anticipation of supremacist Muslim threats and demands.

They cannot understand the simple fact that these predictions from supposedly "in the know" Arab and Muslim politicians do not reflect reality on the ground, but they are meant to be threats against the free world - plain and simple. Not only that, but they are threats that can only come true when the very people who make the threats incite their people to follow through.

The deadline for President Trump's signing the waiver that every president has signed since 1995 on the Jerusalem Embassy Act has passed, without him signing it. But not all experts agree that it is a hard deadline. So the issue is still up in the air.

But no matter what happens, there will always be Western leaders eager to believe and submit to Muslim threats.

A Symbol of Obama’s Hostility to a United Jerusalem Jonathan S. Tobin

The Obama administration notified Congress late on Friday that, once again, it is not moving the United States Embassy to the state of Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. Although Congress mandated that the embassy be moved to the city that is actually Israel’s capital in 1995, it included a waiver that allows the law to be flouted if the president believed America’s national security interests are at stake. Such waivers have been invoked every six months since the law’s passage and they have usually been sent out on Friday afternoons so as to limit news coverage of the decision.

But while the waivers promulgated by both the Clinton and Bush administrations always noted that the embassy might be moved at some point in the future, Obama has never even sought to sweeten this bitter pill to friends of Israel with even such a vague promise.

The question of moving the embassy is something of a chestnut for both the pro-Israel community and American politicians. Everyone knows that no American president would have the guts to acknowledge reality and, at least, recognize West Jerusalem (the part of the city that was not illegally occupied by Jordan from 1949 to 1967). The Arab and Muslim world be very mad. But the sheer irrationality of America’s refusal to do so has always infuriated friends of Israel and often gave those who wished to pander to them an opportunity to grandstand.

That was exactly the purpose of the law that Obama just bypassed. It was sponsored by then Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, a politician who had never previously shown much interest in Israel. In 1995 he was preparing for his futile run for the presidency the following year, so it made sense for him to pretend as if he cared about Jerusalem. But the law, which was welcomed by pro-Israel activists at the time, did nothing to move the embassy. And the ritual of the waiver, which presidents of both parties have regularly invoked, has actually dampened support for the idea since advocacy for the move is seen as transparently cynical.

In spite of all that, President Obama has infused some life into the issue. His decision to speak of Jewish neighborhoods in the city as “settlements” that must be frozen and his insistence on using the 1967 lines as the starting point for future negotiations as opposed to Bush’s frank acknowledgment that those neighborhoods and the surrounding settlement blocs will always be part of Israel, has put the status of Jerusalem back on the political front burner. The applause from the Palestinian Authority for Obama’s decision on the embassy illustrates the way his stand has encouraged Arab intransigence on the issue. While both Clinton and Bush gave us the impression that they would like to move the embassy after the signing of a theoretical peace treaty with the Palestinians, Obama’s attitude is far more negative. America’s stubborn refusal to move its embassy has always been an obstacle to peace. But under Barack Obama, it is also a symbol of his administration’s hostility to a united Jerusalem.