This is what will happen if Trump really does move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem

Having set a combative tone in his inauguration address last week, President Trump has wasted no time tackling his biggest bugbears. First up, Obamacare, diminished by executive order on Friday afternoon; then, over the weekend, an astonishing stepping-up of his war against the established media, with any hope of a ceasefire lost in a volley of falsehoods from the Trump press team.

Now that the Donald’s wand has been waved over America, will the Middle East be next in line for the sorcerer’s magic? When it comes to finding a resolution to the Israel-Palestine conundrum Trump evidently believes that Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, will be the man to hit on a plan that is acceptable to all sides. He at least has the advantage that nobody else has managed it after decades of trying.

Since Trump is a man who obviously likes a bit of symbolism, the suggestion that he might move the United States’ embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem might not come as a huge surprise. It would certainly provoke concern from much of the Arab world. The Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has suggested that the construction of a new embassy there would “not help peace” and would “destroy the two-state solution”. It would also be at odds with the United Nations’ continued refusal to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

The question of Jerusalem’s status is about as thorny as it gets and is at the heart of the wider Israeli-Palestinian riddle. The city is either the answer to a lasting peace or the reason for its impossibility. Both Israelis and Palestinians regard it as their capital; but Israel’s current administration, in line with most of its predecessors, has maintained that all of Jerusalem – rather than a portion of it – will remain eternally under Israeli sovereignty. So although the establishment of a foreign embassy in Jerusalem would not, in and of itself, be a definitive statement against a possible, future two-state solution, it would be perceived as supportive of the hardline position taken by Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

The fact that President Trump’s pick as his ambassador to Israel is a longstanding opponent of the two-state proposition has convinced some commentators that the plan to shift America’s embassy will come to fruition. That Israeli authorities approved the construction of hundreds of new settler homes in occupied East Jerusalem shortly after Trump took office is a further signal that Israel is confident it now has a firm friend in the White House.

Still, Trump is hardly the first US President to raise the possibility of relocating America’s diplomatic HQ in Israel. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush both pledged to make the move to Jerusalem when they were on the campaign trail. During Clinton’s first term, Congress even passed the Jerusalem Embassy Relocation Act. But ever since then, successive Presidents have signed a waiver every six months to block the legislation’s enforcement, convinced that the national security interests of the U.S. are better protected by keeping the embassy in Tel Aviv.

So will Trump break from this cautious, prudent, approach? Sceptics suggest he and his advisers will come to realise that such a symbolic step would not only endanger the prospects of an Israeli-Palestinian accord, but would also incite such anger in Arab nations that it would effectively act as a recruitment drive for Isis and its ilk, fuelling precisely the kind of terrorism that Trump claims he wants to rid from the world. Some of America’s staunchest allies in the Middle-East (Saudi Arabia and Egypt to name just two) would be deeply opposed to the idea of the US Ambassador being based in Jerusalem and it is this disapproval which many believe will persuade Trump’s team to hold back.

Yet as America’s new President made plain when he took office, old assumptions about US policy-making no longer apply. With a putative friend in Moscow, chummy relations with Riyadh or Cairo may be of less significance to America’s approach to the wider Middle East, especially if Trump decides to focus on domestic affairs as closely as his inaugural address suggested he would. In that case, acting in a way which risks provoking violent anger from Palestinians in the occupied territories (and, who knows, a response in kind from Israel) may of little concern to him. Long-term peace for Israelis and Palestinians may be Trump’s stated aim; but if he moves America’s embassy to Jerusalem, further conflict is the more likely outcome.