Schumer blasts Trump’s ‘indecisiveness’ in pushing off embassy move

Democratic Senate minority leader urges president to ‘show the world’ the US acknowledges Jerusalem as Israel’s capital

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is seen ahead of a news conference in Washington, DC, on September 26, 2017.   (Drew Angerer/Getty Images/AFP)
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is seen ahead of a news conference in Washington, DC, on September 26, 2017. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images/AFP)

WASHINGTON — Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer renewed his call for US President Donald Trump to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem after the president said he wanted to wait to give his relaunched peace push a chance.

“President Trump’s recent comments suggest his indecisiveness on the embassy’s relocation,” the New York Democrat said Tuesday in an email to JTA. “As someone who strongly believes that Jerusalem is the undivided capital of Israel, I am calling for the US Embassy in Israel to be relocated to Jerusalem. Moving the embassy as soon as possible would appropriately commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Jerusalem’s reunification and show the world that the US definitively acknowledges Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.”

Trump, in an interview last week with former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, said the time was not ripe to move the embassy.

“I want to give that a shot before I even think about moving the embassy to Jerusalem,” Trump said, referring to his efforts to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

Trump had promised while campaigning to move the embassy, but in June he waived a 1995 law mandating the move, as every president has done before him.

US President Donald Trump (R) meets with former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (L) in the Oval Office of the White House on October 10, 2017. (Win McNamee/Getty Images/AFP

The Zionist Organization of America also decried Trump’s walk-back from his campaign pledge.

“While the ZOA understands that President Trump has not yet made a final decision on the embassy move, the deferral of a decision to move the embassy in accordance with his pre-election pledges – pledges which were repeated by his spokesmen Jason Greenblatt and current Ambassador to Israel David Friedman just before the election and also by spokesman Kellyanne Conway after his election – sends a message of weakness, and a message that the US fears Palestinian violent reaction,” ZOA’s president, Morton Klein, said in a statement Monday.

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