Gabbay Vows To Relocate US Embassy To Tel Aviv

He voiced belief that reversing Trump’s relocation would reestablish the international limbo that his party has always excelled at maintaining.

Tel Aviv, March 13 – Labor Party Chairman Avi Gabbay reacted to reports of possible parliamentary elections this year by taking the opportunity to make campaign promises, among them a pledge to have the American embassy moved from Jerusalem to Israel’s commercial capital of Tel Aviv, where all other ambassadors keep their offices.

Gabbay told a group of Labor and HaTnua activists he expects to form the country’s next government, and that the electorate has grown tired of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s scandal-plagued administration years of stagnant relations with the Palestinians. Polls show Netanyahu’s Likud garnering 40 of the 120 Knesset seats, with the Labor-HaTnua Zionist Union alliance claiming at most 15.

US President Donald Trump made good on a campaign promise late last year by granting formal recognition to Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and ordering the State Department to implement an embassy move his year. The move represents fulfillment of a 1995 Congressional act calling for the relocation, but which incorporated an option for the president to waive the move every six months for national security reasons. Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama signed the waiver every half-year, citing fears of an Arab backlash. Trump did so once, then announced the embassy move late last year. Gabbay, looking to restore Labor to its once-prominent status on the Israeli left, voiced belief that reversing the relocation would reestablish the international limbo that his party has always excelled at maintaining.

“When all the foreign embassies were in Tel Aviv, save for a handful of third-world ones until the 1990’s, Israel enjoyed a remarkable period of stability,” he argued. “For most of that period, a predictable sort of status quo prevailed: the Arab boycott, Palestinian terrorism, a socialist stranglehold on state institutions, a tiny economy, and existential angst. Under Netanyahu, however, all of those venerable phenomena are but shadows of their former grandeur, and the key to restoring the status quo ante lies in restoring the diplomatic limbo of those decades.”

“Only a Labor-led government will commit to achieving that,” he vowed. “Yesh Atid couldn’t care less where the embassy is, the religious parties are in Bibi’s pocket, Kulanu is a joke, and no other party on the left has a chance to wield power – Labor is where it’s at for anyone who wants to return to the glory days of 1973.”

If push comes to shove, predicted Gabbay, he would not rule out a deal with the Arab parties, slated to retain their 13-seat representation, and the glory days to which he would lead a return would be 1947 instead.

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