Palestinians prepare to burn a picture of President Donald Trump in protest of Trump recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital. The slogan in Arabic reads: "Palestinian youth protest movement Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine." | Said Khatib/AFP/Getty Images Trump says U.S. recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's capital, despite global condemnation World leaders warned Trump that the move could spark violence and would create a major impediment to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

The U.S. will officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and begin taking steps to move its embassy there from Tel Aviv, President Donald Trump announced Wednesday, making good on a campaign promise that critics fear could shut the door on Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and ignite fresh violence in the region.

"Today we finally acknowledge the obvious: That Jerusalem is Israel's capital," Trump said in a televised announcement from the White House. "This is nothing more or less than a recognition of reality. It is also the right thing to do. It's something that has to be done."


Trump said he would initiate the process of establishing a new U.S. embassy in Jerusalem. He insisted that his decision did not represent a shift in U.S. dedication to the peace process and called for maintaining the status quo at Jerusalem's holy sites.

"This decision is not intended in any way to reflect a departure from our strong commitment to facilitate a lasting peace agreement. We want an agreement that is a great deal for the Israelis and a great deal for the Palestinians," the president said. "The United States remains deeply committed to helping facilitate a peace agreement that is acceptable to both sides."

Arab and majority-Muslim nations warned that the move would be detrimental to any peace effort, and China and Russia expressed concern. But the decision moves toward fulfilling a Trump campaign promise to relocate the embassy to Jerusalem, and it comes as a victory for Vice President Mike Pence, who firmly pushed the change, which is supported by many evangelical Christians. Trump said Pence, who stood behind the president during the announcement, would travel to the region soon.

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Inside the White House, the Pence trip — which will include stops in Israel and Egypt — was seen as an impetus for the announcement. Since the passage of a 1995 law mandating the embassy move and the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, presidents have signed waivers every six months to keep the embassy in Tel Aviv and avoid cutting off any possible progress on peace talks. Trump did the same in June. Pence wanted clarity on the issue before his trip, a senior administration official said.

Trump will sign another six-month waiver, meaning the embassy move could be years off, but he said Wednesday the administration would begin hiring architects and planners to look into a new facility in Jerusalem.

Pence was “one of, if not the most, vocal advocate to the president to make the decision to, one, recognize Jerusalem, but also to ultimately move the embassy the way that he’s doing it,” a senior administration official told POLITICO.

Still, there are deep concerns that the move could stoke violence in the volatile region. The lead-up to Trump's announcement was peppered with warnings from world leaders that he was making a “grave mistake” that would erode if not outright collapse any broader peace plan in the Middle East.

At the heart of the controversy is Jerusalem’s contested status between Israel and Palestinians. Both lay claim to the ancient city as their capital. Hamas controls the Gaza Strip. Past U.S. administrations have resisted taking a side on the status of Jerusalem, trying instead to keep avenues for peace dialogues open. Palestinians would almost certainly seek recognition of East Jerusalem as its capital in any two-state solution.

Hamas declared a day of rage on Friday to protest the move. The U.S. consulate in Jerusalem on Tuesday issued a security warning barring government employees and their families from personal travel in Jerusalem’s Old City or the West Bank, including Bethlehem and Jericho.

"A decision such as this is both morally wrong and politically dangerous,” said Yousef Munayyer, executive director of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, in a statement to POLITICO. “Not only is Donald Trump deliberately insulting the Palestinian people, but also Arabs and Muslims around the world. In doing so, he is relinquishing what little credibility the United States had left in a region that is already rife with conflict and division."

Within the administration, some saw the warnings as overblown. One senior White House official compared the decision to Trump’s move to pull the U.S. from the Paris climate pact — a move that was preceded by dire warnings but was ultimately, if grudgingly, accepted by world leaders.

And the move was politically calculated. Trump had promised it during the campaign in a speech to the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee.

“Today's action by President Trump is an important, historic step for which we are grateful,” AIPAC said in a statement on Wednesday. “We urge the president to quickly relocate our embassy to Israel's capital.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised Trump and declared it an “historic day.”

“It's rare to be able to speak of new and genuine milestones in the glorious history of this city, yet today's pronouncement by President Trump is such an occasion,” Netanyahu said in a statement. “We’re profoundly grateful for the president for his courageous and just decision.”

Netanyahu will meet with Pence during his visit to the country later this month. The vice president is also scheduled to address the Israeli legislature, the Knesset.

The administration has already begun looking at existing structures for a possible embassy in Jerusalem, said Jonathan Schanzer, vice president of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former Treasury Department terrorism finance analyst, who said he spoke to senior administration officials on Wednesday about the plan.

The administration has ruled out using the existing U.S. consulate in Jerusalem as the embassy. U.S. officials expect it to take at least three to four years to move the embassy, Schanzer said, adding that one Trump aide called that timeline a “conservative estimate.”

Nonetheless, reports of the president’s forthcoming announcement received an almost unanimously negative response internationally. Palestinian envoy to the United Kingdom Manuel Hassassian told BBC radio on Wednesday that moving the embassy to Jerusalem would be “a kiss of death to the two state solution.”

“He is declaring war in the Middle East, he is declaring war against 1.5 billion Muslims [and] hundreds of millions of Christians that are not going to accept the holy shrines to be totally under the hegemony of Israel,” Hassassian said in his interview, which was reported by Reuters.

Egypt's President Abdel Fatah el-Sissi on Tuesday pushed the U.S. not to relocate the embassy and said in a statement he spoke with Trump by phone about the issue. Pence is slated to meet with el-Sissi on his trip to Egypt later this month. The Saudi foreign ministry issued a statement saying the move would "provoke sentiments of Muslims throughout world." Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, meanwhile, said the U.S. recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital would be a "red line" for Muslims, the Associated Press reports.

Pope Francis, who met earlier Wednesday at the Vatican with a Palestinian delegation, voiced his own opposition to the U.S. shift in Israel, urging a continuation of “everyone’s commitment to respect the city’s status quo, in conformity with the pertinent United Nations Resolutions.”

“My thoughts go to Jerusalem and I cannot keep silent my deep concern for the situation that has been created in the past days,” the pope said. “I pray to the Lord that its identity is preserved and strengthened for the benefit of the Holy Land, the Middle East and the whole world and that wisdom and prudence prevail to prevent new elements of tension from being added to a global context already convulsed by so many cruel conflicts.”

Andrew Restuccia, Nahal Toosi and Michael Crowley contributed to this report.

