WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump said Monday that he might visit Israel in May to preside over the opening of a new U.S. embassy in Jerusalem, even as he expressed optimism that Palestinians angered by the move would nonetheless return to the peacemaking table.
"We're looking at coming," Trump said as he hosted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel at the White House. "If I can, I will."
While Palestinian leaders have broken off communications with the Trump administration over the president's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, Trump suggested that they would resume discussions and asserted that he still has "a good chance" of forging a peace deal that has eluded his predecessors for decades.
"The Palestinians, I think, are wanting to come back to the table very badly," Trump said. "If they don't, you don't have peace."
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Palestinian leaders, who also claim Jerusalem as the capital of a future state, have given no public indication that they would return to discussions any time soon. In response to the president's Jerusalem move, they declared that they no longer saw the United States as a neutral broker with the Israelis. Trump then withheld $65 million in aid for Palestinian refugees.
Monday's meeting between Trump and Netanyahu in the Oval Office turned into a celebration of the embassy move that both hailed as a sign that Israeli-U.S. relations have never been stronger. While other presidents have promised such a move and Congress has passed a measure officially declaring Jerusalem to be Israel's capital, no president followed through until Trump, out of fear of angering the Palestinians and other Arabs and prejudging a final peace agreement.
Netanyahu lavished praise on Trump for the Jerusalem decision, comparing him to three of the most important figures in the history of the Jewish people: King Cyrus of Persia, who 2,500 years ago freed the Jews from exile in Babylon and permitted them to return to Jerusalem; Lord Arthur James Balfour, the British foreign secretary whose declaration a century ago first paved the way for a Jewish homeland in Palestine; and President Harry S. Truman, who recognized Israel's existence 11 minutes after it declared independence in 1948.
Just as Israelis remember those figures, Netanyahu said, "We remember how a few weeks ago President Donald J. Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital. Mr. President, this will be remembered by our people through the ages. As as you just said, others talked about it. You did it."
Unlike Trump, however, Netanyahu mentioned the goal of peace with the Palestinians only in passing and focused instead on the topic he always makes his top priority when he visits Washington, the threat from Iran. He encouraged Trump to tear up or renegotiate President Barack Obama's agreement with Tehran limiting its nuclear program, deeming it insufficiently tough.
"Iran must be stopped," Netanyahu said. "That is our common challenge."
The meeting came at a time when both leaders are under increasing domestic pressure from investigations bearing down on them and their families. In the hours before the Israeli leader's arrival, Trump typed out a Twitter message suggesting once again that the special counsel investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 election originated from partisan spying by the Obama administration.
Netanyahu, for his part, was preparing for the meeting with Trump at Blair House, the U.S. government guest residence across from the White House, when news broke in Israel that a onetime adviser and confidant had made a deal with police to turn over tapes of the prime minister and his wife in a corruption case. The adviser, Nir Hefetz, was the third confidant of the prime minister to turn on him.
Trump boasted that he had already cut the cost of building a new embassy, but he seemed to be conflating two different expenses. "They put an order in front of my desk last week for a billion dollars," he said. "I said a billion? What's that for? They said, 'We're going to build an embassy.' I said we're not going to spend a billion dollars. We're actually doing it for about $250,000."
The State Department has estimated that construction of a new embassy will cost about $500 million. Trump's reference to $250,000 presumably is the cost of making adjustments to the existing consular facility so that it can house an office for the U.S. ambassador and be formally redesignated an embassy while a new facility is constructed.
As he has before, Trump argued that his decision to recognize Jerusalem resolved a tough issue dividing Israel and the Palestinians. "We've taken it off the table," he said. "So this gives us a real opportunity for peace."
Hardly any veterans of Middle East peacemaking, including some who support moving the embassy, share this view. Trump's unilateral declaration does not mean that the Palestinians have given up on Jerusalem, and instead they have dug in. Many former negotiators have envisioned a peace deal in which both sides operate their capitals out of Jerusalem, the Israelis in the west and the Palestinians in the east.
But Trump has yet to commit to a Palestinian state, much less supporting the sharing of Jerusalem, and as he has since taking office made no favorable mention of the two-state solution that defined U.S. policy before him.
Nonetheless, he insisted he could still make peace. "We're working on it very hard," he said. "Look, it would be a great achievement even from a humanitarian standpoint. What better if we could make peace between Israel and the Palestinians? And I can tell you, we're working very hard on doing that and I think we have a good chance."
A Section on 03/06/2018