Klobuchar says she won’t reverse Trump’s Jerusalem embassy move

White House hopeful Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) said Monday she would not reverse President Trump’s 2017 decision to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

“I think it would have been better if that was done as part of a negotiation for a two-state solution. I think it’s unfortunate it was done the way it was done but I wouldn’t reverse it,” Klobuchar told Jewish Insider Monday.

{mosads}The Klobuchar campaign did not immediately respond to a request for further comment from The Hill.

Klobuchar joins fellow presidential candidates South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg and former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) in saying they wouldn’t move the embassy.

“I think what’s done is done,” Buttigieg told Axios last month. “We need a big picture strategy on the Middle East, I don’t know that we’d gain much by moving it to Tel Aviv.”

“I believe that the embassy should stay in Jerusalem, which will remain (in whole or part) the capital of Israel under the two-state solution which I (and every prior American president) have supported,” Hickenlooper said in a statement to The Hill last month. “Moving the embassy back to Tel Aviv at this point would be counterproductive and a symbolic gesture of support at best for a two-state solution. I would rather focus my energy on negotiating a real two-state solution.” 

Trump in 2017 announced he would recognize all of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and relocate the U.S. Embassy to the holy city. Democrats panned the move as counterproductive to a two-state solution and said any decision regarding Jerusalem should not have come unilaterally and instead should have been the product of negotiations with the Israeli and Palestinian governments, both of which claim Jerusalem as their capital.

Past presidents of both parties have publicly supported moving the embassy to Jerusalem but skirted the dicey issue by signing waivers every six months that left it in Tel Aviv.

Trump also made waves in March after he signed an executive order recognizing Israel’s claim on the Golan Heights, which Israel captured in the 1967 war and annexed in 1981, marking another reversal from past administrations.

Klobuchar declined to say if she would change that decision, telling Jewish Insider, “I think it should be part of the negotiations.”

“I think again while that isn’t about two-state solution, it’s better to have global discussion with America having a leading role,” she added.