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Israel releases record of Trump-Netanyahu meeting

Xinhua, May 16, 2017 Adjust font size:

Israeli Prime Minister's Office on Monday released a record of a previous meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump, in a bid to reinforce Netanyahu's call for Trump to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.

The summary of the meeting, written by then acting National Security Adviser Jacob Nagel, referred to a lunch meeting between Trump and Netanyahu at the White House on Feb.17.

According to the summary, "the PM was asked about the embassy," and answered that moving the embassy "would not lead to bloodshed in the region, as some were trying to intimidate [President Trump] into believing."

The unusual release came after a Fox News reported that Netanyahu asked Trump not to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem at this point. "The report on Fox News is a lie" and "Netanyahu supports moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem," his office said in a statement.

U.S. State Secretary Rex Tillerson suggested on Sunday that moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv might not impact the Trump's peace-making efforts.

He told NBC that Trump "has taken a very deliberative approach to understanding the issue itself, listening to input from all interested parties in the region, and understanding, in the context of a peace initiative, what impact would such a move have."

Trump is expected to arrive in Israel next Monday as part of his Middle East visit in a bid to reach a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. He is scheduled to meet Netanyahu in Jerusalem before travelling to Bethlehem to meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Israel seized in 1967 the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, where the Palestinians want to establish their future state. The prolonged occupation has been widely condemned, with Israeli settlements considered illegal under the international law.

Despite the passage of the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 by the U.S. Congress, which required the relocation of U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, former U.S. presidents, including George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, consistently renewed a presidential waiver to delay the relocation on national security interests.

The status of Jerusalem remains one of the core issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. So far, the international community does not recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and not a single foreign country has based their embassies in Jerusalem. Endi