Last week, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump offi­cial­ly declared Jerusalem the cap­i­tal of Israel and pledged to move the U.S. embassy to the city, a brazen move that rein­forces the Israeli occu­pa­tion and for­ti­fies the right-wing gov­ern­ment of Ben­jamin Netanyahu. He was embold­ened by the sup­port of key Democ­rats like Chuck Schumer, who was quick to take cred­it for ​“advis­ing” Trump on the issue.

With the Democratic Party divided, Trump took his opportunity to safely fulfill his promise and claim leadership of a “bipartisan” victory.

But Schumer did more than sim­ply advise the Pres­i­dent: He pro­voked Trump pub­licly, declar­ing in Octo­ber, ​“As some­one who strong­ly believes that Jerusalem is the undi­vid­ed cap­i­tal of Israel, I am call­ing for the U.S. Embassy in Israel to be relo­cat­ed to Jerusalem.” In doing so, Schumer was call­ing Trump’s bluff, which had tak­en the form of a cam­paign promise to move the embassy. Schumer was also putting his good stand­ing with Israel before the inter­ests of his par­ty — and before the inter­ests of peace.

Schumer was not alone. When ques­tioned by Inter­cept reporters, Sen. Ben Cardin, the rank­ing Demo­c­rat on the Sen­ate For­eign Rela­tions Com­mit­tee, defend­ed the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, say­ing: ​“Well you know, it is true — the cap­i­tal of Israel is Jerusalem.” Cory Book­er, a staunch defend­er of Israel, had no com­ment. Even high-pro­file crit­ics of Trump like Bob Cork­er and Ste­ny Hoy­er also backed Trump’s deci­sion on Jerusalem.

The Wash­ing­ton Exam­in­er, a con­ser­v­a­tive news plat­form, cap­tured the irony well in a sto­ry about Rep. Eliot Engel’s sup­port of Trump’s deci­sion, even though Engel pub­licly sup­ports Trump’s impeachment.

Some Democ­rats did express oppo­si­tion to Trump’s Jerusalem move. Sen­a­tor Eliz­a­beth War­ren crit­i­cized the president’s state­ment, issued Wednes­day, say­ing it will make peace more dif­fi­cult to achieve in the Mid­dle East. Sen­a­tors Bernie Sanders, Jeanne Sha­heen, Joe Manchin and Chris Mur­phy expressed sim­i­lar con­cerns. Dianne Fein­stein sent a let­ter to Trump, which she also tweet­ed, say­ing that the recog­ni­tion of Jerusalem as the cap­i­tal of Israel would ​“spark vio­lence, fur­ther alien­ate the Unit­ed States and under­mine the prospects of a two-state solution.”

Yet, oth­er respons­es from key Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty play­ers were more ambiva­lent. Rep. Nan­cy Pelosi issued a state­ment declar­ing, ​“Jerusalem is the eter­nal cap­i­tal of the Jew­ish home­land. But in the absence of a nego­ti­at­ed set­tle­ment between Israel and the Pales­tini­ans, mov­ing the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem now may need­less­ly spark mass protests, fuel ten­sions, and make it more dif­fi­cult to reach a durable peace.”

Israel occu­pied and seized East Jerusalem in the 1967 war. Since then, Israeli set­tlers have carved up East Jerusalem with set­tle­ments, dis­plac­ing Pales­tin­ian res­i­dents. While the dec­la­ra­tion that Jerusalem is the cap­i­tal of Israel has been a ral­ly­ing cry of pro-occu­pa­tion forces, Israeli sov­er­eign­ty over Jerusalem is not rec­og­nized by the inter­na­tion­al community.

Yet, rec­og­niz­ing Jerusalem as the cap­i­tal of Israel has been a core Demo­c­ra­t­ic posi­tion. In 2016, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty plat­form stat­ed, ​“While Jerusalem is a mat­ter for final sta­tus nego­ti­a­tions, it should remain the cap­i­tal of Israel, an undi­vid­ed city acces­si­ble to peo­ple of all faiths. Israelis deserve secu­ri­ty, recog­ni­tion, and a nor­mal life free from ter­ror and incitement.”

This is pre­cise­ly the kind of lan­guage Trump used in his statement.

With the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty divid­ed, Trump took his oppor­tu­ni­ty to safe­ly ful­fill his promise and claim lead­er­ship of a ​“bipar­ti­san” vic­to­ry. The Democ­rats who fol­lowed Schumer deliv­ered a big win to Trump and a huge loss to the Pales­tini­ans. Under­stand­ably, Pales­tini­ans have respond­ed with out­rage at this bla­tant breach of inter­na­tion­al law, and Israel has answered this with jet attacks on Gaza.

Thumb on the scales

Trump pack­aged the move as an unmask­ing of real­i­ty on the ground, declar­ing, ​“Today, we final­ly acknowl­edge the obvi­ous: that Jerusalem is Israel’s cap­i­tal. This is noth­ing more, or less, than a recog­ni­tion of reality.”

Anoth­er com­po­nent of that ​“real­i­ty,” accord­ing to Trump, is that fail­ure to car­ry through on the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Act is respon­si­ble for the fail­ure of the peace process. ​“After more than two decades of waivers, we are no clos­er to a last­ing peace agree­ment between Israel and the Pales­tini­ans,” he said. ​“It would be fol­ly to assume that repeat­ing the exact same for­mu­la would now pro­duce a dif­fer­ent or bet­ter result.”

In fact, the 1995 Act was signed in the con­text of the Oslo Accords, and shared in the main flaw of the peace process that the Accords inau­gu­rat­ed: The Unit­ed States has per­sis­tent­ly depend­ably put its thumb on the scale to tip the bal­ance in Israel’s favor. It is that sup­port — and the cor­rup­tion of the Pales­tin­ian Author­i­ty cou­pled with the bad faith nego­ti­a­tions of Israel — that has doomed the peace process.

Mov­ing the cap­i­tal to Jerusalem is about as clear a sig­nal of U.S. bias, and the utter demise of the two-state solu­tion, as could be imag­ined. As Mairav Zon­szein and Aziz Abu Sarah put it, ​“The pre­tense of U.S. neu­tral­i­ty is final­ly fin­ished.” Cru­cial­ly, this also means that the hopes for the Oslo-ini­ti­at­ed peace process are dead.

Trump went on to pro­claim that ​“Israel is a sov­er­eign nation with the right like every oth­er sov­er­eign nation to deter­mine its own cap­i­tal. Acknowl­edg­ing this as a fact is a nec­es­sary con­di­tion for achiev­ing peace.”

This state­ment pur­pose­ful­ly ignores UN Res­o­lu­tion 181, which was passed in 1947. It stat­ed that ​“the City of Jerusalem shall be estab­lished as a cor­pus sep­a­ra­tum [sep­a­rate enti­ty] under a spe­cial inter­na­tion­al régime and shall be admin­is­tered by the Unit­ed Nations.” This was reaf­firmed in 1949, after the estab­lish­ment of the state of Israel, in UN Res­o­lu­tion 303.

Thus, Trump’s action is in defi­ance of inter­na­tion­al law and human rights dis­course in two ways — it main­tains the myth of U.S. neu­tral­i­ty and flaunts key, foun­da­tion­al res­o­lu­tions. Trump’s deci­sion main­tains and inten­si­fies is a dead­ly pat­tern in which, as always, the Pales­tini­ans will suf­fer. The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, instead of defend­ing Pales­tini­ans against this injus­tice, is large­ly part of the problem.