Unpaid White House Employee Representing the Nation at the Dreaded Opening of the New U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem

Ivanka and Jared, per Jared’s role as Innovations Officer and in Ivanka’s new official capacity as an Unpaid Employee, are off to oversee the Middle East.

Tomorrow, a new U.S. Embassy to Israel opens in Jerusalem, as part of Trump’s “ultimate deal”–“a great deal”–which he’s promised to broker between Israel and Palestine and bring peace to the decades-long conflict. Palestinians are calling it “Nakba day,” or, “catastrophe day,” the Guardian reports. The Times of Israel reports that Israelis, too, have been protesting in the streets. The BBC reports that over 40 Palestinians have been killed at the border in protests since the end of March. Violence is feared. Trump will not be there. Ivanka and Jared have arrived.

Trump’s December 2017 decision to recognize the hotly-contested holy land as Israel’s capital breaks with the position of “virtually every other nation in the world,” the New York Times reported. Palestine considers East Jerusalem to be occupied territory which it would make its capital, and a diplomat for the European Union has reiterated its stance that peace relies on finding a way for the Palestinian state and Israel to share the city. According to the Times of Israel, Israeli marchers on Saturday called on the U.S. to “stop escalating tensions, spreading hatred, and provocations that undermine a chance for peace.”

The initial announcement in December reportedly resulted in rocket fire from Gaza and a retaliatory airstrike–though less bloody than expected, many worry that conflict will escalate. “[The situation] could explode,” Ilan Goldenberg, former U.S. State Department official overseeing Israeli-Palestinian negotiations wrote recently for Haaretz, “and we could find ourselves in the middle of a new war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Nobody knows, but it is irresponsible for the United States to be dumping gasoline on this potential fire.”

Ambassador David M. Friedman will reportedly not be working out of the Jerusalem embassy full-time to get around potential “diplomatic awkwardness,” in the words of the New York Times.

Ivanka and Jared and Steve Mnuchin and 12 Congresspeople will be attending a gala this evening which most EU ambassadors to Israel will be boycotting, Haaretz reports.

Once it was crazy that Ivanka sat in the president’s chair.