The US Congress passed the Jerusalem Embassy Act by a large majority on 24 October 1995, providing for the transfer of the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem by 31 May 1999 at the latest. The act formally passed into law in November 1995, but President Bill Clinton refused to sign it, though the transfer had been one of his campaign promises in 1992. Presidents George W Bush and Barack Obama did the same, believing that the transfer should wait until the Israel-Palestine conflict was resolved, and that the US should heed the international consensus on the status of Jerusalem. To avoid ratifying the act, they signed waivers, as did Donald Trump in June 2017.

This nuanced approach ended when Trump recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital on 6 December. This went against UN Security Council resolution 476, which in June 1980 declared that all Israeli measures ‘purport[ing] to alter the character and status of the Holy City’ had ‘no legal validity’. A month later, Israel’s parliament passed a ‘basic law’ declaring that Jerusalem, ‘complete and united, is the capital of Israel.’ The Security Council responded in August 1980 with resolution 478.which demanded that member states withdraw their diplomatic missions from Jerusalem. Since then, with a few exceptions (Costa Rica and El Salvador kept their embassies there until the early 2000s, and some consulates remain), diplomatic missions have been based in Tel Aviv.

Trump’s announcement was greeted in Israel with joy and official delight. Few commentators mentioned that the White House had sidestepped the question of Israel’s full and exclusive sovereignty over Jerusalem by stating that the city’s precise limits needed to be defined in the framework of final status negotiations. And the US is not ready to move: it has to acquire land and build a new embassy first. US secretary of state Rex Tillerson has indicated several times that the transfer is two or three years off, not before the end of (...)