US likely to designate Jerusalem move in 2019

President Donald Trump's administration is expected to approve a plan to move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem as early as next year, Washington said on Friday.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has been considering several options since US President Donald Trump, late last year, to the dismay of millions of people across the world, declared Jerusalem to be Israel's capital and announced the US would move its embassy there from Tel Aviv.

Tillerson has said previously that building a new diplomatic facility that satisfies significant security requirements is a complex process involving site-selection, permitting and construction. He's said that process is starting immediately but will take at least three years.

But a temporary plan that has been presented to Tillerson would see an existing US consular building in Jerusalem designated as the interim embassy until the new one is built, three US officials said. The officials weren't authorised to discuss the situation by name and demanded anonymity.

Under the most likely scenario, US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman and a handful of top aides and support staff would open temporary offices in the Jerusalem annex by this spring - possibly as early as April, the officials briefed on the matter said.

Friedman and the others would retain their workspaces in the old embassy building in Tel Aviv, but the step would allow Trump to claim that technically the embassy had moved.

Most embassy operations would remain in Tel Aviv in the short-term, so the annex would effectively be a satellite branch of the Tel Aviv facility.

But supporters of the move could make the case that the administration had followed through on its pledge to move the embassy to the holy city and that Tel Aviv staff is merely supporting the Jerusalem office.

Two of the officials say Vice-President Mike Pence, a staunch Israel apologist within Trump's administration, has been pushing the State Department to accept the proposal quickly so that Pence can announce it during a highly anticipated trip to Israel.

Pence departed on Friday evening for his visit to the Middle East.

Since Trump's controversial announcement on 6 December, outlining his decision to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and officially recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, angry protests have erupted worldwide.

Numerous violent episodes have also been sparked since then, in which at least 16 Palestinians and an Israeli have been killed, and many more injured.