Guatemala declared that it would do the same. The editors of the Weekly Standard explain why this matters:
“It is important to be among the first,” the Guatemalan president Jimmy Morales said on Monday at the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) policy conference, “but it is more important to do what’s right.”
Guatemala was one of only nine nations that backed the U.S. embassy move when the UN passed a resolution condemning it. The other countries were similarly small players on the global stage: Honduras, the Marshall Islands, Togo, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, and of course Israel.
We hear the guffaws of the foreign-policy elite in Washington and London and Paris. Guatemala? Honduras? Togo? The alignment of these few little nations with U.S. policy is itself, members of this elite suggested, an indication of just how outlandish the American policy is.
Well, okay. But 35 nations merely abstained in the UN vote, and many of them are both sizable and influential: Argentina, Australia, Canada, Colombia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, to name a few. We wonder what would happen if some of these nations also decided to move their embassies to Jerusalem? Perhaps not much, or perhaps some halfhearted protests in Middle East capitals and some formulaic denunciations from the usual suspects in Turtle Bay. Perhaps not even that. . . .
[F]ar from jeopardizing the at-present nonexistent peace process, moving those embassies would help to rid future negotiations of the pernicious delusion that the Palestinians may one day control all of Jerusalem. The only basis on which to negotiate is the truth, and so far the U.S. and Guatemala are the first openly to acknowledge that truth. Others are welcome to follow.
Read more on Weekly Standard: http://www.weeklystandard.com/editorial-a-little-nation-does-the-right-thing/article/2011833