Monday, July 3, 2017

Exclusive — Former Sen. Joe Lieberman ‘Optimistic’ Trump Will Move U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem

PARIS, France — Former vice presidential candidate and Senator Joseph Lieberman is “optimistic” that President Donald Trump will move the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
In an interview with Breitbart News from France on Friday, Lieberman said:
I’m an optimist about this. And maybe irrationally optimistic in the sense that I co-sponsored the legislation in the ’90s that mandated the movement of the American embassy to Jerusalem. The reason I did it is, strangely, of all the countries in the world, Israel is the only one where we don’t locate our embassy in the city that the host country says is their capital.
Lieberman, who was speaking on several panels and at the annual “Free Iran” rally put on by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), said, “We have a site already in Jerusalem for our embassy and it is part of what was Israeli territory in 1948. So, there’s not going to be any negotiation about that site.”
Trump, following in line with tradition, decided to sign a 6-month waiver delaying the potential move of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. Asked to react to this, Lieberman said:
I think he wants to give some air and some opportunity to what his administration’s trying to do to create a negotiation between Israel and Palestinian people. But I have an inner confidence that if there’s no progress between Israelis and Palestinians, certainly in his first term, or six months, or a year from now, that he’ll keep his word and move the embassy to Jerusalem. It’s the right thing to do.
The U.S. State Department refuses to recognize Americans born in Jerusalem as being born in Israel.
The State Department manual instructs: “For a person born in Jerusalem, write JERUSALEM as the place of birth in the passport. Do not write Israel, Jordan or West Bank for a person born within the current municipal borders of Jerusalem.” READ MORE