Facing dark warnings of a historic misstep and widespread unrest, US President Donald Trump delayed a decision on whether to recognise Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and move the US embassy in Washington.<\/p>\n
The White House said Trump would miss a deadline to decide on shifting the embassy from Tel Aviv, after a frantic 48 hours of public warnings from allies and private phonecalls between world leaders.<\/p>\n
The mercurial president has yet to make his final decision, officials said, but is expected to stop short of moving the embassy to Jerusalem outright, a central campaign pledge which has been postponed once already by the new administration.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe president has been clear on this issue from the get-go: It\u2019s not a matter of if, it\u2019s a matter of when,\u201d said White House spokesman Hogan Gidley, who said a declaration on the move would be made \u201cin the coming days.\u201d<\/p>\n
Domestic politics may however push Trump toward recognising Jerusalem as Israel\u2019s capital instead, in a gesture towards conservative voters and donors.<\/p>\n
The status of Jerusalem is a key issue in the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, with both Israelis and Palestinians claiming the city as their capital.<\/p>\n
With Trump\u2019s decision looming, leaders from across the Middle East and elsewhere ramped up public warnings against any shift in decades-old US policy.<\/p>\n
French President Emmanuel Macron was among those who warned Trump that Jerusalem\u2019s status must be decided \u201cwithin the framework of negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.\u201d<\/p>\n
Amid internal White House disagreements, several US administration officials were unable or unwilling to say with certainty what Trump would decide.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe president\u2019s going to make his decision,\u201d his Middle East peace envoy and son-in-law Jared Kushner said.<\/p>\n
Israeli\u2019s defense minister Avigdor Lieberman urged Trump to grasp a \u201chistoric opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n
But from elsewhere in the region the message was clear: don\u2019t do it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the status of Jerusalem is changed and another step is taken… that would be a major catastrophe,\u201d Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Facing dark warnings of a historic misstep and widespread unrest, US President Donald Trump delayed a decision on whether to recognise Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and move the US embassy in Washington. The White House said Trump would miss a deadline to decide on shifting the embassy from Tel Aviv, after a frantic 48 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11991,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11990"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11990\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11992,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11990\/revisions\/11992"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}