TEL AVIV // President Donald Trump will keep his pledge to move the United States embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani said, despite Palestinian warnings that such a step would spark violence and sabotage the prospect of renewed peace talks.
En route to Israel with messages from Mr Trump to prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Mr Giuliani said the new president and his advisers will probably take “six months or so” to develop a strategy for American peace efforts in the Middle East.
How and when the US moves the embassy will be discussed when Mr Netanyahu visits the White House next month, Mr Giuliani said.
“I think you’ve got to wait a little bit, but it will get done,” Mr Giuliani said at the Tel Aviv offices of Greenberg Traurig, a law firm where he heads the law firm’s global cybersecurity, privacy and crisis management practice.
The fate of Jerusalem is among the most sensitive issues Israelis and Palestinians will need to address in any peace negotiations.
Israel took the eastern part of Jerusalem from Jordan in 1967 and considers all of the city as its capital, while the Palestinians want the eastern portion as the capital of their for state.
Mr Trump realised the embassy decision “implicates four or five countries and how they’re going to react,” Mr Giuliani said.
“He needs to know how the prime minister of Israel is going to react and how he wants to see something like this done.”
On Thursday, Mr Trump said it was too early for him to speak publicly on the issue.
Mr Giuliani, who was known during his tenure for a hardline attitude towards petty crime in New York City, dismissed Palestinian warnings that moving the embassy would ignite the whole region.
“I think this country is capable of dealing with waves of violence,” he said.
Mr Giuliani predicted Mr Netanyahu and Mr Trump would have a “very, very good, collaborative relationship,” as opposed to what he described as the “hostile relationship” between Barack Obama and the Israeli leader.
The changed atmosphere was evident in the first week of Mr Trump’s tenure. While construction plans beyond Israel’s 1967 border were a recurring source of friction with the Obama administration, Mr Trump was silent as Israeli officials approved plans for 2,500 housing units in the West Bank and hundreds of flats in East Jerusalem.
Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s executive committee, called the building plans a “flagrant violation of international law” and accused Israel of “exploiting the inauguration of the new American administration to escalate its violations and the prevention of any existence of a Palestinian state.”
Mr Trump considered Mr Giuliani for attorney general and secretary of state before naming him to head a committee on cybersecurity.
Mr Giuliani said he discussed cyber defence with Mr Netanyahu and other Israeli officials and will return in a few months for more substantive talks on the subject. Israel is among the global leaders in the field.
“We realise in the United States that we have a cybersecurity defence problem,” Mr Giuliani said. His committee is tasked with organising private sector experts into groups that can help address the government’s priorities, he said.
* Bloomberg
