Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the weekly cabinet meeting at the Prime Minister’s office in Jerusalem January 7, 2018. . (photo credit: ABIR SULTAN / REUTERS)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked his Romanian counterpart Viorica Dancila for her efforts to relocate her country’s embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
He spoke with her at his office in Jerusalem on Wednesday at the start of her two-day visit to Israel, her first since taking office in January 2018.
Dancila is in Israel to bolster bilateral ties with Israel and to prepare for a joint Israeli-Romanian governmental meeting that will take place in Romania later this year.
In advance of her visit, Dancila announced that her country plans to follow US President Donald Trump’s lead by relocating its embassy and submitted a proposal to do so to the cabinet.
But approval will be needed from Romanian President Klaus Johannis, who has opposed the move.
To date, only Guatemala has committed to an embassy relocation. It plans to open its Jerusalem embassy on May 15, one day after the US embassy opens its doors in the country’s capital.
Honduras and the Czech Republic have also spoken of such a move, but no final decisions have been made.
The international community has largely refrained from placing its embassies in West Jerusalem because it believes the status of the city should be determined through final status negations for a two-state solution. The few countries that had embassies in Jerusalem closed them in 1980 to protest the Knesset’s passage of the Jerusalem law, which formally annex areas of the city over the pre-1967 lines.
In December, US President Donald Trump announced the United States recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and pledged to relocate its embassy.
His words are understood to refer solely to West Jerusalem. The US has yet to make any additional policy change to indicate that Jerusalem is part of sovereign Israel.
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