Democratic candidate for the White House Joe Biden said on Wednesday April 29 that he would maintain the US Embassy in Israel in Jerusalem if he won the election in November, while deploring Donald Trump's decision to transfer it from Tel Aviv.
The former US vice president said that the embassy "Shouldn't have been moved" by the Trump administration without it being part of a broader Middle East peace deal. "But now that it's done, I won't bring the embassy back to Tel Aviv", he added during an online fundraiser.
"Keeping alive the prospect of a two-state solution"
"But what I would do … I would also reopen our consulate in East Jerusalem to dialogue with the Palestinians, and my administration will urge the two sides to take initiatives to keep the prospect of a two-state solution alive", he confided to some 250 donors, gathered on the Zoom videoconferencing software.
Since his arrival at the White House in January 2017, Donald Trump has multiplied the gestures in favor of the Hebrew state, with in particular the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in December 2017, and the transfer of the American embassy from Tel Aviv in the holy city the following May.
This decision had turned against decades of the status quo in international diplomacy.
At the end of January 2020, his son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner had unveiled his peace plan for the Middle East on which he had been working since the surprise election of Donald Trump in 2016. The document, which gives the Hebrew State a great deal number of concessions, was vehemently rejected by the Palestinian authorities and remained a dead letter.
