The US Embassy Move to Jerusalem vs. The "Peace Process". What "Peace Process"? - by Denis MacEoin

...Meanwhile, Western leaders, including religious figures such as the Pope, are enchanted with the fantasy that a peace process exists, and forever chant the mantra that nothing must be done to interrupt it. President Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is the first time any world leader has stood up to the threats of anger and violence.

Denis MacEoin..
Gatestone Institute..
19 December '17..

On December 6, US President Donald Trump fulfilled a promise that was made by Congress on November 28, 1995 in its Jerusalem Embassy Act -- to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel and to mark this by moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to the ancient city. That move, according to the Act itself, was to "be established in Jerusalem no later than May 31, 1999". Trump's declaration that the US will now implement the Act has been a historical démarche. So why has it taken so long to act on this agreement?

For more than two decades, this clear expression of the will of Congress had, in effect, been held in abeyance following an amendment (section 7) that introduced a waiver that allowed presidents to "suspend the limitation set forth in section 3(b) for a period of six months if he determines and reports to Congress in advance that such suspension if necessary to protect the national security interests of the United States". Since then, every president who followed (including Trump, six months earlier) exercised this waiver.

Over the years, implementation of the Act was caught up in increasingly complicated legal and diplomatic issues that made deferment appear judicious and necessary in the belief that stalling it might help the so-called "peace process" between Israel and the Palestinians: according to Time Magazine:

"though both the Clinton Administration and Israeli government 'support the move to Jerusalem in principle, they would prefer to see the peace process more stabilized before confronting the explosive issue of Jerusalem'."

Clinton's naïve, but at the time understandable, belief that movement was being made towards Israeli-Palestinian peace was only shattered five years later when Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat walked away from a major round of agreements at Camp David and some months later started the Second Intifada (the so-called al-Aqsa Intifada) that lasted from 2000 to 2005, and led to the deaths of thousands on both sides. So much for that peace process.

On his return to Israel after the failure at Camp David Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, wisely commented:

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