[O]ut of the blue, President Donald Trump announced on Dec. 6 that he was formally recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, tossing aside 70 years of careful American neutrality and infuriating Palestinians, who also want their capital to be in Jerusalem."Out of the blue"? Trump announced his position over a year ago.
"Careful American neutrality?" Is that what ignoring the reality of Israel's capital is being called nowadays?
And note that avoiding infuriating Palestinians is considered a valid diplomatic objective while worrying about infuriating Israelis is not even a consideration. The reason is that Arabs tend to get violent when they don't get their way and Jews don't. So the obvious solution is to lean towards the position of the irrational crazies who might kill you for saying words that upset them.
That's diplomatic wisdom, in the opinion of the New York Times, and much of the world. Facts be damned.
Israel’s government has been in West Jerusalem since the state’s founding in 1948. In the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, Israel drove Jordan back from East Jerusalem and occupied the whole city. But the United States, like most of the world, had withheld formal recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital pending a peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians that would fairly resolve all major disputes. One might refer to such bargaining, to maximize leverage in pursuit of the best outcome, as the art of the deal.Yes, those 70 years of denying reality has really helped bring peace. Let's try it for 70 more years.
But that’s just not how this White House operates. In fact, it conceded another piece of leverage on Friday and again angered Palestinians for no apparent purpose. White House officials made clear their expectation that Jerusalem’s Western Wall, which lies outside Israel’s pre-1967 borders and abuts some of Islam’s most sacred sites, will eventually be declared part of Israel. This time, they were careful to say that the final borders of Israel and any Palestinian state must be settled in negotiations. But it seemed another case of America taking Israel’s side on an explosive issue.Because, you know, it is always possible that Israel would give up on its desire to hold onto Jewish holy places because of world pressure.
The idea of keeping Jerusalem united is obviously a non-starter to the New York Times. The idea that Israel, which has been a state for nearly 70 years, has a better claim on how to define its capital than the fictional state of Palestine, is considered crazy. The idea that pressuring "Palestine" to compromise on Jerusalem is crazy - only the Jews must give away their heart and soul for peace, but Arabs are assumed to be the rightful owners of all the holy sites because 19 years of illegal Jordanian occupation is considered more legally important than 50 years of Jerusalem being open to all religions under Israeli rule.
Trump did nothing other than speak the truth and note that peace is impossible without recognizing reality. 70 years of make-believe has not brought peace, and in fact it has impeded it.
But the idea that carefully constructed lies is more important than obvious facts is not at all foreign to those who have been reading the New York Times over the decades.