TEL AVIV — President-elect Donald Trump “remains firmly committed” to moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, his transition team said.
“This is a commitment that the president-elect made numerous times on the campaign trail, that he remains firmly committed to,” Jason Miller, a transition team spokesman, said Friday. His remarks came on the heels of Trump’s nomination of David Friedman to be the U.S. ambassador to Israel.
In a statement, Friedman said he looked forward to working from the embassy in Jerusalem.
Miller said that a timeline as to when the embassy would be moved would be “premature” at this point, but reiterated Trump’s commitment to the transfer.
Meanwhile, the Palestinians claimed that were Trump to make good on his promise, it would “destroy” the peace process.
“The status of Jerusalem should be negotiated between Israelis and Palestinians,” Saeb Erekat, secretary-general of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, said. “No one should take any decisions which may preempt or prejudge (negotiations) because this will be the destruction of the peace process as a whole.”
Erekat also slammed Friedman over his comments that it would not be illegal for Israel to annex the settlements.
Erekat said he would like to look Trump and Friedman in the eye and say to them, “If you were to take these steps of moving the embassy and annexing settlements in the West Bank, you are sending this region to more chaos, lawlessness and extremism.”