By Dan Calabrese ——Bio and Archives--February 24, 2018
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The timetable is earlier than the one offered as recently as last month by Vice President Mike Pence, who said during a visit to Israel that the embassy would open by the end of 2019. The State Department will formally designate a facility in Jerusalem’s Arnona neighborhood, currently used for consular affairs, as an embassy, even as plans proceed to eventually build a new compound that could take several more years to open. President Trump on Friday boasted of his decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel during a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland, drawing enthusiastic applause. While other presidents held back from such a move for fear of triggering a backlash among Arabs and prejudging final peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, Mr. Trump said he defied “incredible” pressure to do what he considered the right thing. “You know, every president campaigned on, ‘We’re going to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel,’ everybody, for many presidents, you’ve been reading it, and then they never pulled it off, and I now know why,” Mr. Trump said. “I was hit by more countries and more pressure and more people calling, begging me, ‘Don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t do it.’ I said, ‘We have to do it, it’s the right thing to do.”
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