During his campaign, Donald Trump stated his intention to relocate the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem—a promise likewise made, but never implemented, by Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. The State Department will no doubt advise the new president to refrain from such a move, claiming it would provoke Arab rioting and prejudge an issue best left to negotiations between the parties. Max Singer argues that, on the contrary, such a move could advance the interests of peace:
The State Department’s insistence on the diplomatic fiction that none of Jerusalem is part of Israel helps preserve the Palestinian hope that, someday, Israel will be forced to give up its capital and will be destroyed as the independent, democratic Jewish state. That Palestinian hope is the main obstacle to peace. The Palestinians can only make peace when their community—and perhaps the Arab world of which it is a part—comes to understand that international pressure will never force Israel to acquiesce in its own destruction. One of the best ways the U.S. can demonstrate that it will never consent to the Palestinian destruction of Israel is for Washington to stop ignoring blatant Palestinian lies that work against peace.
There is another way that an American truth-telling strategy could encourage peace. The Palestinian leadership now tells its people—and most of them believe—that compromise with Israel would be immoral because Israel is a colonial invader that stole Palestinian land by force. By that argument, Israel has no moral claim to any of the land, and any concession to it would be dishonorable.
But Israel is descended from Jewish kingdoms that ruled parts of the land for centuries in ancient times. It too has a traditional base for moral claims to the territory (in addition to legal claims from the League of Nations mandate). If the Palestinians recognized this truth, they would see that compromise between the two groups, each of which has valid claims to the land, could be an honorable way to end the dispute and not a cowardly yielding to force.
Read more on BESA Center: http://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/378-singer-moving-us-embassy-jerusalem-great-opportunity-new-president/