Rumors circulating in the press and affirmed by prominent American supporters of Israel have it that the prime minister asked President Trump not to make good on his campaign promise to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. Nonsense, writes Evelyn Gordon, and dangerous nonsense at that:
To understand just how ludicrous [this rumor] is, contrast it with another one making the rounds: that Netanyahu also asked Trump to pressure him to restrain settlement construction. . . . Netanyahu has many reasons for wanting such pressure. But none of those reasons applies to the embassy issue. Moving the embassy poses no risk [of European retaliation], because while settlement construction is an Israeli decision, the embassy location is strictly an American one. Even the EU wouldn’t punish Israel for a White House decision. The same goes for American Jewry. . . .
[Furthermore], failure to move the embassy increases pressure [on Netanyahu] from his right-wing base to provide compensation in the form of increased settlement construction. . . .
The [Trump] administration’s internal battle over this issue . . . provides a far more convincing explanation of Trump’s backtracking on the embassy than intervention by Netanyahu. . . .
Israel has striven unsuccessfully for decades to get the world to accept Jerusalem as its capital, and just this year, it has finally started scoring some victories. . . . Yet now, some of Israel’s strongest supporters are . . . giving the rest of the world a perfect excuse for maintaining the status quo of non-recognition. No government will be more pro-Israel than Israel’s own, so if even Netanyahu doesn’t really want Jerusalem to be treated as Israel’s capital, what foreign government would?
Read more on Evelyn Gordon: http://evelyncgordon.com/blaming-bibi-for-trumps-embassy-u-turn-hurts-israel/