President Trump did not keep his campaign promise by announcing that he would move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem

It might be called Yom Yerushalayim (Jerusalem Day) but most residents of the capital steeled themselves for a challenging week replete with road closures and disruption to public transportation. Already on Sunday afternoon the day before Trump’s arrival police fanned out throughout the city center to secure the streets and keep traffic moving. It was a futile task on Jerusalem’s narrow overcrowded roads. As traffic came to a standstill people jumped off buses long before reaching their destinations and hoofed it the rest of the way.

Sunday night most streets around the perimeter of the Old City were closed entirely for a light show which bathed the Old City’s walls in Israel’s national colors of blue and white.

On Monday before the presidential visit to the Kosel large swaths of the Old City approaches to Har Habayis were declared off-limits to pedestrians while Shabak and Secret Service agents were deployed to add an extra layer of security.

It seems that President Trump’s campaign promise to build a big beautiful wall between the US and Mexico will fall by the wayside but Israeli authorities accommodated the first-ever visit by a sitting president to the Kosel by constructing a tall wall along the men’s section of the lower Kosel plaza covered with thick mesh. A large white tent was erected to provide both security and privacy for the presidential party.

Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz the rav of the Kosel accompanied Trump as he does with all diplomatic visitors to the Western Wall. Prime Minister Netanyahu had hoped to join Trump but the president demurred causing a bit of controversy that threatened to mar the visit.

Eventually Netanyahu dropped his insistence — probably a wise move considering that for President Trump basking in the limelight is a solitary experience. Netanyahu side-by-side with Trump at the Kosel would have made the president’s visit there a political one not a religious or personal one which would have implied de facto recognition that the Kosel is part of Jerusalem and thus part of Israel. The US still does not recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and officially adheres to the spirit of the 1947 UN resolution designating Jerusalem as an international city.

Rabbi Marvin Hier the dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center who also delivered a prayer at Trump’s inauguration rejected the idea that Trump’s own insistence on going it alone implied that the president agrees with the UN position on Jerusalem.

“I have every confidence that President Trump will not be fooled by this nonsense ” Rabbi Hier said. “I would say very clearly given the 2 000-year history of Jewish persecution the Inquisition pogroms and the Holocaust and the fact that for most of those 2 000 years we were denied access to the Kosel it would be sheer fantasy for any diplomat to float this idea of [permanently] internationalizing the Old City.”

Perhaps the bigger setback for Netanyahu was that on this visit President Trump did not keep his campaign promise by announcing that he would move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

This was also a disappointment to Mike Huckabee former governor of Arkansas and Republican presidential candidate who spoke to Mishpacha by phone during his visit to Jerusalem for Yom Yerushalayim.

Huckabee said he discussed the embassy issue with both the president and Vice President Pence within the last two weeks. Saying it would be inappropriate to divulge the contents of those conversations Huckabee said he reiterated that the embassy relocation is both a commitment Congress made when it passed its original resolution on the topic in 1995 as well as a Trump campaign promise. Huckabee said the foot-dragging is causing anger among his constituents in the US.

“Israel is an issue for evangelical Christians that is virtually equal to any other issue of great importance including abortion ” Huckabee said. “Evangelicals feel very strongly that it would be very detrimental if it appears the administration is walking back its commitment and promise.”

Overall Huckabee said Trump’s trip played well with the evangelical community.

“People appreciated both his candor and clarity plus the fact that he was treated so respectfully. Much more so than Obama which shows that the leaders of the Arab world respect strength not weakness ” Huckabee added.

Zero Tolerance for Extremism

But for all the pomp and circumstance the underlying concept of the Trump administration’s vision for the Middle East — and the reason he chose Riyadh Jerusalem and Vatican City — is to enlist the caretakers of the historic capital cities of Islam Judaism and Christianity in a joint effort to replace extremism with tolerance.

Saudi Arabia drew mixed reviews in this regard allowing in some but not all Jewish reporters requesting access to the country. The Saudis had no choice when it came to Trump’s top Jewish advisor — his son-in-law Jared Kushner — and Jason Greenblatt his special representative for international negotiations.

Greenblatt spent Shabbos in his hotel room feasting on rice crackers peanut butter and fruit. “Shabbat was quiet and contemplative largely spent by me thinking about the important goals the President is trying to achieve on this trip including revitalizing our alliances and transmitting a message of unity to Jews Christians and Muslims ” Greenblatt said in e-mail correspondence with Mishpacha.

Israeli officials take a positive view of the initiative; for one because it lends support to their contention that Israel has been the only ruling power in the Holy Land to serve as an impartial caretaker of the holy sites of all religions and because a focus on solving religious conflict dispels the notion that the Arab-Israeli dispute is a territorial conflict to be solved by taking a carving knife to the country’s heartland.

“The fact that the president understands there is a religious element here and that he’s not ashamed to talk about it to deal with it and cope with it is very important ” said Major-General (res.) Yaakov Amidror a former head of Israel’s National Security Council speaking on a conference call in Jerusalem with the foreign press. “But I’m not naive. I don’t see peace coming here tomorrow morning.”

Neither does the president.

In his speech Sunday to more than 50 leaders of Arab countries that Saudi Arabia’s King Salman assembled in Riyadh Trump unfurled the first signs of what might be called a “Trump Doctrine” in the Middle East.

“We are adopting a principled realism rooted in common values and shared interests ” the president said. “We are not here to lecture — we are not here to tell other people how to live what to do who to be or how to worship. Instead we are here to offer partnership — based on shared interests and values — to pursue a better future for us all.”

This would be a marked departure from the George W. Bush era of trying to export democracies to the theocracies kingdoms or feudal clans that rule the Arab world. Beyond the cultural divide American-style democracy gripped by years of political paralysis and growing polarization is hardly a hot export item in today’s world.

However not everyone is ready to sign on to the Trump Doctrine.

Florida senator Marco Rubio who briefly challenged Trump for the Republican presidential nomination last year told CNN’s Jake Tapper that Trump’s line about not being here to lecture is not one that he would have delivered. “It’s in our national security interest to advocate for democracy and freedom and human rights now with a recognition that you may not get it overnight ” Rubio said.

And in an op-ed piece in National Review Online neocon commentator Daniel Pipes also leveled critique at parts of Trump’s speech.

“I bristled at Trump calling Saudi Arabia ‘sacred land ’ ” wrote Pipes. “I gagged on the warm praise for King Salman someone implicated in contributing tens of millions of US dollars during the 1990s to finance jihadi violence in Bosnia and Pakistan.”

Pipes did praise Trump’s speech for signaling a major shift in the right direction from the Obama years particularly concerning Iran and Islam. “Most important is Trump’s willingness to point to the ideology of Islamism as the enemy ” Pipes wrote.

Overall the first few days of Trump’s overseas visit went without a major glitch.

Trump stayed at arm’s-length from the White House press corps and kept his itchy Twitter fingers to a bare minimum mostly to retweet accolades and compliments to his hosts.

The more the president lowers his social media profile and shows restraint in the face of the criticism that shadows every politician the faster he will have the chance to establish credibility as a world leader.

This is especially crucial for Trump who needs a few wins in road games before he returns home to Washington. Next week the Senate Intelligence Committee will hear testimony from James Comey the man Trump fired as FBI director. Trump will also need to steel himself for the start of the special prosecutor’s investigation into his alleged Russian ties.

After Washington gets back to work following next Monday’s Memorial Day holiday all the positive talk about Saudi Arabia Israel and retooling NATO will quickly shift back to the domestic woes Trump left behind before the wheels went up on Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base whisking him to the Middle East.

This article was contributed to by reporting from Tzippy Yarom Jerusalem; Yisroel Besser; Omri Nahmias Washington D.C.; and Jacob Kornbluh also the political writer for JewishInsider.com. Originally featured in Mishpacha Issue 661.