In an about-face since his address last month to Jewish Republicans, leading GOP candidate Donald Trump promised, if elected president, to move the US embassy to the Israeli capital.
US presidential candidate Donald Trump said he was all in favor of moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the Israeli capital.
During an appearance on The Brody File, a Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) show, the interviewer mentioned that Republican candidates Ted Cruz and Marc Rubio supported the move, to which Trump responded, “I am for that one hundred percent.”
This was in contrast to his address to the Republican Jewish Congress in December, when he infuriated the audience by questioning Israel’s commitment to peace and refusing to endorse Jerusalem as the united capital of Israel.
In fact, a US Supreme Court ruling in June supported the Obama administration’s position on the status of Jerusalem, ruling that as far as the US government was concerned, Jerusalem is not recognized as the capital, nor is it even officially considered to be part of Israel.
According to the ruling, ending a 12-year-old lawsuit by Jerusalem-born American Menachem Zivotofsky, 12, and his parents, Americans born in the city of Jerusalem cannot list Israel as their birthplace on their US passports.
In 1995, the US passed the Jerusalem Embassy Act, with overwhelming support in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, mandating the embassy’s relocation to Jerusalem by the fiscal year 1999, but allowing for a presidential waiver. Indeed, Obama is not the first US president to block the move, as each president has done so ever since.
“I will be good to Israel,” Trump stated in the CBN interview.
By: Terry Nir, United with Israel
(With files from Ynet)