U.S. embassy move to Jerusalem now appears fast-tracked for 2019 completion

Remember, we're "inflaming the Middle East" with this move. Because it was so docile before. We're "provoking" Palestinians into attacks against Israel. Because they were so reluctant to attack before. We've caused Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to refuse to consider any U.S.-proposed peace plan. Because he was so amenable before.

Hey, if we're causing all that damage, we'd might as well snap to it. And apparently we're going to:

The Trump Administration is speeding up its plans to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, with plans to open the new diplomatic post in 2019. This is a change from what Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and other Trump administration officials had previously said when they projected it would take three years or more to construct a new Embassy. The decision to accelerate plans was made in a Thursday meeting at the White House. "The secretary will do this at the pace of security, not politics," said Steve Goldstein, undersecretary of state for diplomacy and public affairs. "Our equity is in the safety and security of U.S. personnel." The new plan is to convert an existing structure in the neighborhood of Arnona to become the new embassy rather than to take the longer route of building a new facility.

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White House adviser and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, U.S. Ambassador to Israel and former Trump bankruptcy lawyer David Friedman, as well as Mideast negotiator and former Trump lawyer Jason Greenblatt are said to have pushed for the accelerated timeline. It is an abrupt about face for President Trump. In a Wednesday interview with Reuters, the president denied there was a plan to relocate the U.S. Embassy within a year. The question was prompted by earlier public comments made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said he believed the U.S. Embassy would open within the year.

The media will make a big deal about the "about face" or whatever, because it's easier than covering substance, but if Trump denied it on Wednesday then announced it on Friday, all that means is that they weren't ready to make the announcement when the media were pushing for an answer. If you want to speed something up but you still haven't finished the plan that will allow you to do it, you commit publicly to the speed-up. You wait until you're ready and you know how you're going to do it.

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Completing this process in 2019 will impact the global dynamics of the move a lot. Most countries have their de facto embassy in Jerusalem anyway because that's where all major Israeli governmental functions occur. You can't deal with the Israeli government in any meaningful way if you don't operate outside Tel Aviv. There's not that much going on in Tel Aviv. So countries maintain nominal embassies in Tel Aviv so they can maintain the charade of treating Jerusalem as disputed territory, while in fact doing just about all their business there. The only thing Trump is doing is ending the charade, at least as far as the U.S. is concerned. He's also taking away one of the Palestinians' points of threat, because you hear a lot now about how this will "inflame" the region, but people are going to figure out pretty quickly that you can't inflame what's already a massive dumpster fire. Fact: Jerusalem is the legitimate capital of Israel. Every country has the right to choose its own capital, and Israel is the only country in the world that gets condemned for doing so. Another fact: The world pretends otherwise because it is anti-Semitic and sympathetic to the terrorists who operate out of the Palestinian regions. And finally, the best fact of all: The United States is about to make it exceedingly difficult for this to go on without people realizing the truth about it, which is exactly why we're encountering so much condemnation for this. And that's the best way for you to know that what we're doing is right.