Editor’s note: This article was published on 6 December 2017 just prior to President Donald Trump’s official announcement that recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. President Trump also broke the news that the US Embassy would be moved to the holy city.
As we all brace for Donald Trump to say he will move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, people are speculating why, and last night David Makovsky, a pro-Israel analyst who favors moving the embassy, said that Trump will play to his domestic “base” by moving the embassy.
Shibley Telhami of Brookings promptly debunked that claim, saying on the PBS News Hour that his polling shows that voters are not pushing for the move: 63 percent of Americans oppose moving the embassy to Jerusalem, including 44 percent of Republicans. “While 53 percent of Evangelicals support the move, 40 percent oppose it.”
Telhami offered his own theory: Trump will use the uproar over the (anticipated) move of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem to cover for the failure of his vaunted “deal of the century” between Israelis and Palestinians:
Why do it? What’s driving the president to do it? There’s no pressure from the Israelis. There’s no pressure on him from the Arab world. It doesn’t advance America’s ends in the Middle East, so why is he doing it?… This issue plays into the hands of America’s enemies in the Middle East… I don’t see an upside, that’s why I’m led to a belief that maybe the administration has…