I Was Wrong About Jerusalem

Before President Trump's announcement last Wednesday that he was recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital and setting in motion plans to move the embassy, I was pretty clear on what I thought was likely to happen. As I wrote two days prior to the announcement and testified to Congress last month, unless Trump made unambiguously clear that the U.S. was only recognizing Israeli claims over West Jerusalem, I anticipated violence to break out immediately and for the change in American policy to doom any chances of a successful peace initiative in the short term and possibly kill off Palestinian engagement entirely in the long term. Immediately after watching Trump's short speech on Wednesday, in assessing the likely fallout, I wrote, “Trump's lack of an explicit endorsement of an equal Palestinian claim to part of the city will be seen as a reversal of longstanding American policy and make it far more difficult for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to continue to engage with Trump's emerging peace initiative. It will adversely affect Palestinian cooperation with the U.S. and Israel going forward, and is likely to lead to protests and violence.”