Many posters here argue that we should have received some “benefit” for moving the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This brings up an issue from the recent past; should we have moved the U.S. Embassy from Bonn to Berlin? One can argue that the move was deeply provocative to Russia. Russia had, just nine and one-half years earlier had effective control over East Germany. We were taking a stand on a regional controversy.
For what benefit?
First of all, it would have been the USSR, not Russia.
But Bonn was the de facto capitol of of West Germany, with most of the West German government offices there. Once those were moved to Berlin, it would have been in our interest to move there, too.
This is not at all the same. And note that Tel Aviv is a one hour drive from Jerusalem. It’s an almost 375 km drive from Bonn to Berlin.
It was Russia in 1999. Learn your history.
It’s always easier if your embassy people can easily reach the national government people, so being near their offices is an advantage.
For Bonn to Berlin, it’s a 5-6 hour drive – quite a big distance to travel.
For Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, it’s only half an hour to 1 hour, depending on traffic. Not nearly as neecded.
Russia never “had control over East Germany”, per your OP. East and West Germany were united in 1990. I don’t need to learn that history because I was there 3 days after the reunification.
And… I think we’re done here.
We’re getting a tad over-nitpicky, here. Pre-1991, “Russia” and “the USSR” were clearly not synonymous, but Russia was by a considerable margin the dominant republic of the USSR, so it’s not a gross error to use the terms interchangeably.
Anyway, this analogy seems to hinge on “One can argue that the move was deeply provocative to Russia. Russia [when it was the dominant member of the USSR] had, just nine and one-half years earlier had effective control over East Germany.”
Was it provocative? I don’t remember any press at the time on the subject about Russian opinion and frankly… does it matter if there was? I also don’t remember any concerns that Russia was going to do anything about American recognition of the unified Germany’s capital at Berlin. That’s not true of the Israel/Jerusalem/Palestine situation.
I gather the OP is a tad upset in some way that Trump saying he’d recognize Jerusalem as the Israeli capital (whether or not he follows through on this remains unclear) got a largely negative (or least less than “proud”) response here, but trying to link it to some post-Cold-War paperwork seems like a stretch.
What “regional controversy”? The USSR was one of the countries that signed the treaty relinquishing control over Berlin!
I’ve had enough with forcing Israel to meet impossible double-standards.
Yeah, I don’t recall any negative perceptions of the move to Berlin (at least not outside of Russia), because reunification of West and East Germany was a total non-issue by then. The Berlin Wall fell in late 1989, the two halves of Germany formally reunited the following year, and the year after that (1991) saw the dissolution of both the Warsaw Pact and the USSR. By 1999, a unified, western-oriented Germany had been a fait accompi for years.
Yeah, but a decade later, after the USSR dissolved, some hypothetical Russians nostalgic for the old days might have been upset, or something, and those hypothetical concerns are just as valid as the concerns of actual PalestInians, apparently.
The only real controversy I can recall on the issue was whether or not to allow Germany to reunify at all. I can certainly understand the perspective of someone like Margaret Thatcher, who remembered World War II and almost certainly had heard from her parents about the privations of World War I, having misgivings about German reunification, and quite possibly being of the opinion that not only should Germany not be reunified, but that in 1945 it should have been broken up into twenty or more pieces and rendered permanently harmless.
Then I guess it’s a good thing I never said it was a “gross error”.
Comparing apples and oranges is not an example of a double standard. Sure, they’re both fruit and Berlin and Jerusalem are both cities, but the comparisons don’t really line up much beyond that.
I rest my case.
Well, that’s some case you got there. If it were mine, I’d rest it, too.
That illustrates teh double standard. Israel should be a full member of the family of nations.
The hypothetical you should be comparing here is:
How would the US have benefitted had Reagan announced his intention to move the US West German embassy to Berlin in 1981?
OB
In 1999, there was no nation of East Germany that continued to claim Berlin as its capital.
That is not the case as regards Israel and Jerusalem.
It is, it’s just unpopular. I can’t figure out how your comment responds or relates to mine in any way.
I’m trying to picture the circumstances under which Reagan might have done so, and all I can come up with is if there was some groundswell of support among West Germans to put their capital there, and that seems like an improbably impractical thing for them to want.
The Soviet response to such a move, I guess, would be to… I dunno… be aware that an effort to invade West Berlin would really, really really start World War III, as opposed to just really really?
Somewhere around here, I have a box with a gen-u-wine chunk of the Berlin Wall. I’m not sure where I put it. Maybe one day I’ll pair it with a gen-u-wine chunk of the Western Wall, after a devastating Middle East war destroys Jerusalem.
The electorates of both German states had agreed democratically to unify into a single state within the borders established in 1945 and subsequently ratified into international law, any residual legal and political hangovers from WW2 relating to Germany’s occupied status had been agreed all round (including by Russia), and wherever necessary all this had been incorporated into peace treaties. What then happened within Germany was a matter for them alone.
None of that applies to Israel/Palestine, where there is still too much not agreed, or if agreed not adhered to.