Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Embassy Move To Jerusalem Likely Won’t Happen Before 2019, Rex Tillerson Says

(JTA) — Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem “is not something that is going to happen this year, probably not next year.”

Tillerson made the remarks Friday in Paris, where he was meeting with his French counterpart, Jean-Yves Le Drian, CNN reported.

His statement followed mass protests by hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in Asia and the Middle East over President Trump’s declaration on Wednesday that the United States recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and will prepare to move its embassy there from Tel Aviv.

In the West Bank and Gaza, one Palestinian man died and 100 others were wounded in riots that resulted in clashes with the Israeli army. There were no Israelis injured in the clashes Thursday and Friday.

In Indonesia, Pakistan and Malaysia, many thousands held vocal protest rallies outside the U.S. embassies. Massive protests were also recorded in Jordan and Turkey.

Tillerson said that Trump had ordered the State Department to “start the process of making the move” but it would take time, as the department still needed to acquire a site, make construction and building plans and ensure necessary authorizations before actually building the embassy.

He also said that Trump’s decision does not “indicate any final status for Jerusalem,” adding that “would be left to the parties to negotiate and decide.”

Trump announced the embassy move amid a heated foreign policy debate over the relocation, calling it a “recognition of reality” and “the right thing to do.”

His decision upended seven decades of U.S. foreign policy that has resisted a recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital before the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is resolved.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.