FOREIGN POLICY/ISRAEL/MIDDLE EAST/PALESTINE/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Trump and senior members of his administration exulted on Monday [5-14-18] over the opening of the United States’ new embassy in Jerusalem, dismissing the violence raging along the border with Gaza as the ceremony unfolded as ‘unfortunate propaganda.’ For Mr. Trump, the opening of the embassy was an opportunity to keep a campaign promise, and was yet another example of his willingness to upend decades of conventional thinking on foreign policy and to do what other American presidents had not dared. But the split-screen image of the carnage nearby was a sobering reminder that what Mr. Trump is claiming as a foreign policy coup has only complicated the prospects for the Middle East peace the president has said he is seeking. The White House said the violence in Gaza would not hinder its efforts to seek an end to the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, but the administration also made it abundantly clear on Monday that Mr. Trump was currently siding with Israel.Asked whether the White House was urging restraint by the Israelis, Mr. Shah again blamed Hamas, a Sunni militant group. ‘This is a gruesome and unfortunate propaganda attempt,’ he said. The violence threatened to overshadow an otherwise triumphant day for Mr. Trump, coming as Israel is celebrating the 70th anniversary of its independence, an occasion marked by Palestinians as the ‘nakba,’ or ‘catastrophe,’ in which hundreds of thousands of them fled or were expelled from their homes.”
-Julie Hirschfeld Davis, “Jerusalem Embassy Is a Victory for Trump, and a Complication for Middle East Peace,” The New York Times online, May 14, 2018