TEL AVIV — If nothing else, President Trump’s recognition this week that Jerusalem is what the Israelis say it is — the capital of their country — managed the impressive feat of bringing together Israel’s famously contentious political parties, which with (almost) one breath, responded: at last. But at the same time, it highlighted differences with mainstream American Jewish groups — and, predictably, set off protests by Palestinian Arabs and drew a warning about a “third intifada.”

The reaction to Trump’s speech, which also marked the start of what will be a years-long process of moving the American embassy from its present home in Tel Aviv, demonstrated that Jerusalem — where King Solomon had his temple — is a topic that cuts across political lines in Israel. And even as divisions have persisted about questions such as the future of Jewish settlements on the West Bank, parties across almost the entire spectrum have coalesced behind the view that Israel should retain sovereignty over the entire city.

In anticipation of Trump’s announcement on Wednesday, Yair Lapid, head of the centrist party Yesh Atid (There Is a Future), said: “This is also the time for the entire world to recognize united Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.” Even Avi Gabbay, the newly elected leader of the Israeli Labor party, stated that he believed Israel should retain control over the entirety of Jerusalem: “Jerusalem should be united under our sovereignty.” Yet he also expressed hope that the American president’s decision would breathe new life into a moribund peace process: “I hope that along with the recognition, the American administration will take steps in the Middle East to restart the peace process. It can happen. We should see it as something that can inspire negotiations.”

Israeli Avi Gabbay, the newly elected leader of the Israeli Labor party, in Tel Aviv, Israel, on July 10, 2017. (Photo: Tsafrir Abayov/AP) More

And, of course, the Israeli right was quick to applaud Trump. In a video released on social media after the president’s speech, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu compared the announcement to monumental events in Israeli history, such as the Balfour Declaration, a 1917 white paper by the British government often considered the foundational document of the modern State of Israel.

And the far-right religious-nationalist Jewish Home party has responded to Trump by pushing an amendment to the 1980 constitutional law that codified Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The Jewish Home Party amendment would require any concessions of parts of Jerusalem to be approved by a two-thirds majority in Israel’s parliament. Naftali Bennett, chairman of the Jewish Home party and the current minster of education, said: “For 25 years, talks of peace failed because they were always based on the illusion of carving up Jerusalem. This week, President Trump took a bold step toward peace, making it clear Jerusalem is Israel’s capital.” The bill, he said, “will guarantee no changes are made in our united and eternal capital without broad consensus and support.” The final vote for the bill is scheduled for Monday, just five days after Trump’s announcement.

All of this marks a distinct shift in Israeli opinion in recent years. Since the peace process began in the mid-1990s, it has been the consensus view that Jerusalem would become the divided capital of both Israel and a future Palestinian state as the outcome of a final status negotiation between the two parties. In Trump’s speech at the White House on Wednesday, he was careful to refer to Israel as the capital of Israel, not the “undivided capital” of Israel — a phrase which could be seen as putting a finger on the scale of the outcome of Jerusalem’s status in any future American-led negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.

In the past, Israeli prime ministers from different parties have said they were willing to relinquish control of Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem to their Palestinian counterparts. In 2000, Ehud Barak, the former prime minister from the Israel’s center-left Labor Party, offered to the Palestinians neighborhoods in East Jerusalem and the site that Jews call the Temple Mount and Muslims call the Noble Sanctuary — the holiest site in Judaism and the third most holy site in Islam. And in 2008, Ehud Olmert, from the centrist party Kadima (Forward), similarly offered to withdraw from East Jerusalem neighborhoods and the Old City of Jerusalem, where the most important holy sites are located.