Donald Trump's Jerusalem decision disapproved of by nearly all former US ambassadors to Israel

Departure from American foreign policy on divisive issue for first time since 1948 condemned by nine out 11 ex-diplomatic envoys

Palestinian protesters burn the US and Israeli flags in Gaza City in response to Trump's announcement (AFP/Getty Images)

All but two of 11 former US ambassadors to Israel contacted by The New York Times after President Donald Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital thought the plan was wrongheaded, dangerous or deeply flawed.

The 11 ex-envoys all closely followed Trump’s announcement on Wednesday, in which he also set in motion a plan to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. Even those who agreed that Trump was recognising the reality on the ground disagreed with his approach - making a major diplomatic concession without any evident gain in return.

One of the exceptions was Ogden Reid, a former congressman who was the ambassador from 1959 to 1961, at the end of the Eisenhower administration. “I think it’s the right decision,” he said. “Not a lot more to say.”

The other exception was Edward Walker Jr, who was ambassador from 1997 to 1999, under President Bill Clinton.

“I think it’s about time,” he said. “We’ve been remiss in not recognising realities as they are. We all know Israel has a capital, it’s called Jerusalem, and over my 35 years of service in the Middle East no one ever questioned that.”

What about the departure from US policy since 1948 - that the final status of Jerusalem is a matter for negotiation between the Israelis and Palestinians - and the condemnation from the international community?

“It’s really a question of what are the lines, the borders, to be drawn around the state of Israel and the ultimate state of Palestine,” Walker said. “Nothing in what the president has said precludes the negotiation of a settlement of this issue.”

That was not the prevailing view. More typical was the perspective of Daniel Kurtzer, who was the ambassador from 2001 to 2005, under President George W. Bush.

“There are many downsides, both diplomatically and in terms of the Middle East peace process, and no upside,” Kurtzer said. “We are isolated internationally once again - except for the Israeli government, which supports this - and we are taking ourselves out of the role the president says he wants to play as a peace broker.”

Several of the ambassadors were open to recognising West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. But they said that should happen as part of a broader strategy that would also require the Israelis to halt or slow settlement construction and that would recognise East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state.

Martin S. Indyk, who served as ambassador twice, both times during Bill Clinton’s presidency, proposed just such a deal in an op-ed essay in The New York Times this year, weeks before Trump was sworn in.

“Not surprisingly, President Trump didn’t follow my advice to couple his move on Jerusalem with a diplomatic initiative,” Indyk said on Thursday. “Instead, he tried to limit the damage by avoiding any geographic definition of the capital that he is officially recognising. Unfortunately, that nuance will be lost on all sides.”

William Caldwell Harrop, who was the ambassador from 1992 to 1993, called Trump’s decision “slightly reckless” and even “kind of a masochistic move” that might “undermine his own, repeatedly discussed, ‘great deal’ of bringing peace to the Israelis and Palestinians.”

Having decided to make his announcement, Trump could have been explicit that he would place the embassy in West Jerusalem, Harrop said.

“One has to be pessimistic,” he said after listening to Trump’s speech. “We’ll get, before long, more efforts by Palestinians to build up international recognition of the state of Palestine. Some form of intifada is very likely, and there will be more bloodshed.”

Edward Djerejian, who was the ambassador from 1993 to 1994, in the optimistic aftermath of the Oslo peace accords, also found Trump’s effort to thread the needle unsatisfying.

Trump portrayed his decision more as a recognition of on-the-ground reality than as a sharp change in policy, insisting that “the specific boundaries” of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem had yet to be settled.

But Djerejian, who was a White House spokesman during the Reagan presidency, said there was “an inherent contradiction” in recognising Jerusalem without saying what, exactly, comprises Jerusalem. “The timing and substance of this new position serves to confuse rather than clarify,” he said.

Most of the former ambassadors were reluctant to ascribe motivations to Trump, though several said the move would bolster his support among hard-line supporters of Israel in the United States and among some evangelical Christians.

However, Thomas Pickering, who was ambassador to Israel during the Reagan administration, called it “a serious foreign policy mistake” and an attempt either at “ego satisfaction” or an effort to divert attention from a special counsel’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties with Russia.

In an interview, Pickering compared Trump’s move to the film Wag the Dog, in which a President fabricates a war to distract attention from a sex scandal.

The New York Times