Introduction

IN DECEMBER 2017, the administration of U.S. president Donald Trump upended seventy years of U.S. policy by recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Subsequent months have seen several other reversals of long-standing U.S. Middle East policy. These include Washington’s stance on Palestinian refugees; diplomatic representation of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the United States; U.S. aid to the PA and to the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which provides basic services to Palestinians living in refugee camps; and Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights.

Amid repeated delays in the unveiling of the Trump administration’s much-ballyhooed peace plan, these radical steps have already revealed the basic lineaments of the purported “deal.” They not only expose the pro-Israeli and anti-Palestinian biases of the U.S. president and his advisors in even more blatant form than is routine for U.S. policy-makers, they also constitute the administration’s wholesale adoption of virtually all the basic theses of the right-wing forces that have dominated Israeli politics since 1977.

In light of such policy shifts, launched in close coordination with the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, it is a wonder that anyone awaits anything more from the Trump plan. All that remains to be disclosed are the details: how much Palestinian land Israel will annex, what degree of subservience to Israel will the Palestinians be subjected to, how big a bribe will they be offered to give up their basic human and political rights, and which Arab states will be asked to help impose these terms on them.

The recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital was the Trump administration’s opening salvo in the process of reversing longstanding U.S. policy on Palestine. As such, it merits more attention and deeper analysis than it has received. This monograph, published by the Institute for Palestine Studies as part of its Current Issues in Depth series, attempts to fill that gap. It provides the necessary historical background to understand the policies of previous U.S. administrations regarding Jerusalem, and where and how the Trump administration has departed from them.

In this monograph, IPS senior fellow Mouin Rabbani shows why the international consensus on Jerusalem that is rooted in international law—and of which the United States formed a part until recently—is so important. He argues that a unilateral disposition of the question of Jerusalem entirely in line with Israeli desiderata, now with Washington’s unequivocal support, has profound implications for the possibility of enduring peace and reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians. Indeed, he suggests that it makes such a peace impossible. On the one hand, it puts paid to the possibility of a Palestinian state, which is inconceivable without Jerusalem as its capital, while prefiguring in Israel’s favor the resolution of questions of sovereignty over other areas of Palestine. On the other hand, by placing the rights and interests of Israelis, both individual and collective, above those of Palestinians, the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital renders impossible any solution involving complete equality between Palestinians and Israelis.

The disregard for international law and for basic principles of equity, and indeed the lack of a “decent respect to the opinions of mankind” that has characterized foreign policy since the Trump administration’s inception, were on full view in the decision regarding Jerusalem. As Rabbani shows, for over seven decades there has been a solid global consensus based on the rejection of unilateral steps regarding the Holy City by any party, with Israel the only dissenting voice. The shattering of this consensus by the United States and the absence of a robust response by any party—Palestinian, Arab, or international—is an ominous sign for a rules-based international order, as well as for the future of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East.

ON 6 DECEMBER 2017, the United States government formally recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. On 14 May 2018, it commenced the process of relocating the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to the Holy City. The Trump administration rationalized its departure from longstanding US positions and its dramatic rupture with the international consensus on Jerusalem, as an overdue endorsement of the sovereign right of Israel to determine the location of its capital city and an expression of the sovereign right of the United States to determine the location of its diplomatic missions to foreign states. President Trump further stated that the United States was merely conferring belated recognition upon a longstanding political reality and, by so doing, was facilitating rather than complicating the search for Israeli-Palestinian peace.

If the diplomatic principles cited by the United States to justify its decision appear self-evident, it is equally the case that in order to obtain legitimacy, these principles must be applied within the framework of international law and diplomatic convention. Israel’s claim to sovereignty over Jerusalem and US recognition and actions in support of such claims, singularly fail to meet this test. This reality has been at least formally recognized by every previous US administration, all of which refused to endorse Israel’s position on Jerusalem, and each of which either helped forge or acted to maintain the prevailing international consensus on the Holy City. More recently, this reality was once again emphasized in the United Nations Security Council when, on 18 December 2017, 14 of its 15 members, including Washington’s closest allies, supported a draft resolution, vetoed by the United States, that rejected the Trump declaration.

That every US president from Truman to Obama, including those who as candidates pledged to align US policy on Jerusalem with Israel’s, consistently refrained from defying the international consensus on Jerusalem ultimately reflects their recognition of the unique status of the Holy City and of the catastrophic consequences of permitting Israel to unilaterally determine its future. Simply put, Israeli-Palestinian coexistence in any form is inconceivable without a mutually satisfactory disposition of Jerusalem. Additionally, without a capital in East Jerusalem there can be no Palestinian state and thus no two-state settlement. At the same time, and to a greater extent than any other issue, the fate of Jerusalem is central not only to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but to the Arab-Israeli one as well. No other city on earth is simultaneously held sacred by the three Abrahamic faiths and their various denominations or holds a greater capacity for unleashing religious and sectarian strife.

The Trump administration initially sought to ameliorate the significance and impact of its actions by asserting that it was not taking a position on the territorial scope of Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem, that it continued to support a negotiated Israeli-Palestinian agreement on the status of the Holy City, and that the relocation of the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem would not commence for at least several years. Yet, President Trump subsequently, and repeatedly, claimed that his measures had taken “Jerusalem off the table, so we don’t have to talk about it anymore”,[1] while the US embassy in Jerusalem was inaugurated less than five months after the proclamation of recognition. If the United States is not explicitly supporting Israel’s claim of exclusive sovereignty over the entirety of Jerusalem, the rest of the world –Israel and the Palestinians included – has responded on the basis that the United States has taken a decisive turn in this direction.

In view of the extraordinary threat a disintegration of the international consensus on Jerusalem has for Palestinian rights, the prospects for Arab-Israeli peace, global religious co-existence, and indeed international peace and security, and the unrivalled capacity of the United States to challenge this consensus, this publication reviews the historical and diplomatic record in order to provide a better understanding of longstanding US and international policy on Jerusalem. In so doing, it seeks to emphasize the importance of ensuring that the status of Jerusalem is resolved on the basis of established diplomatic principles and international law, and to highlight the concomitant dangers of empowering Israel’s illegal and illegitimate assertions of exclusive sovereignty over, and associated activities within, the Holy City.