NOT HOLDING MY BREATH ON PROMISED EMBASSY MOVE

Trump considering when to move US Embassy to Jerusalem

Reuters and Israel Hayom staff

Israel Hayom
November 29, 2017

U.S. President Donald Trump is actively considering "when and how" to relocate the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Vice President Mike Pence said on Tuesday.

Pence made the comment at Israel's Mission to the United Nations at an event celebrating the 70th anniversary of the U.N. vote for the partition of Palestine and the establishment of a Jewish state.

Trump vowed in his election campaign and since to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, but in June signed a waiver to keep it in Tel Aviv. He is facing a new deadline in early December on whether to extend the waiver again, a practice that his predecessors used to avoid inflaming tensions in the Middle East.

Jerusalem Affairs and Heritage Minister Zeev Elkin said Tuesday that "in recent years, we have all witnessed attacks in international circles on the status of Jerusalem and its ties to the State of Israel."

Elkin, who spoke at an international conference in the capital devoted to the issue of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem, said, "We have nothing to be ashamed of or to fear."

"Precisely now, as we mark 70 years since the November decision, the world must recognize that united Jerusalem is the legal capital of Israel," Elkin said.

Also on Tuesday, the Knesset Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee approved an amendment to the Basic Law: Jerusalem that requires a special majority of 80 MKs in a Knesset vote to pass any measure that concedes Arab areas adjacent to the city to the control of any foreign entity.

The amendment, proposed by Habayit Hayehudi MK Shuli Mualem-Rafaeli, passed by a vote of nine to seven.