Observation: I am worried (Trump Jerusalem announcement hollow)
Dr. Aaron Lerner 8 December, 2017

“Why don’t you pull on Santa’s beard? Because you don’t want to discover it’s
fake.”

I am very concerned by what transpired.

It turns out that there is no substance to President Trump's Jerusalem
statement.

There has been no effective change in how the Government of the United
States relates to Jerusalem.

The Government of the United States of America still refuses to write
"Israel" as the place of birth in the passports of citizens born in
Jerusalem.

In fact, there is no expression of a change in the status of Jerusalem
anywhere in the U.S. Government.

By the way - Mr. Trump could have complied with the requirement of the
Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 by ordering that the SIGN on the Jerusalem
Consulate building at 18 Agron Road in Jerusalem be changed to read "Embassy
of the United States of America". There was no reason for the bizarre scene
that after proclaiming that he's working on moving the embassy (that may
possibly take place sometime in his second term) that he signed the
POSTPONEMENT!

There are two possible explanations:

1. That our team failed to attend to the details.

2. We knew that we couldn't get something more substantial than an empty
declaration.

And this isn't the first time.

This is exactly what has happened repeatedly with the "Oslo process" with
every Israeli Government.

I don't know what the future holds, but it is reasonable to assume that
there will be "give and take" programs in the future and not just
presidential announcements.

And if our "give" will be, as always, concessions of substance, and our
"take" will be things that, after review, are substantially remote in
substance from what our leaders claim they are - I fear that we face trouble
in the future.
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