(CNSNews.com) – The White House on Friday issued its most recent waiver to bypass U.S. law mandating that the American Embassy in Israel be moved to Jerusalem, choosing – not for the first time – to do so late on Friday, when news releases tend to receive relatively little media attention.

Friday marked the sixth time President Obama has issued the “national security” waiver, and five of those six times he did so on a Friday. (The exception was on Jun. 2, 2010, a Wednesday.)

His Republican and Democratic predecessors, Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, also invoked the waiver every six months during their terms. (Of the 16 times Bush issued the waiver during his two terms, four were released on Fridays; two of Clinton’s four waivers were issued on a Friday.)

The U.S. Congress in 1995 passed a law recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and stating that “the United States Embassy in Israel should be established in Jerusalem no later than May 31, 1999.”

The inbuilt waiver authority allowed the president to postpone the move, in the interests of “national security,” for consecutive, six-month periods. The State Department under all three administrations argued that the embassy move would compromise the U.S. role as a Mideast mediator and harm efforts to achieve a peace settlement.

Israel’s claim to Jerusalem is not recognized by most of the international community, and countries with diplomatic relations with the Jewish state have their embassies located in or near Tel Aviv. The Palestinians want Jerusalem as the capital of a future independent state.

Although Bush and Clinton both issued waivers, their attitudes toward the Jerusalem Embassy Act did differ.

Clinton did not veto but also declined to sign the bill, which became law without his signature.

Bush inserted into the language of the routine waiver each time a sentence stating, “My Administration remains committed to beginning the process of moving our embassy to Jerusalem.”

Obama dropped that sentence from the waiver after taking office.

U.S. lawmakers over the years have introduced numerous attempts to strike the waiver authority, most recently in a bill introduced by Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) last September that would fulfill the aims of the 1995 law, but remove the waiver.

Heller’s bill echoed a provision from the original law that would bar the State Department 50 percent of the funds allocated to maintain diplomatic missions abroad until the Jerusalem embassy was officially opened.

The bill was put forward as one of scores of amendments to the Department of Defense Authorization Act. The Senate passed the appropriations bill late Thursday, but the Jerusalem amendment was among the many that fell.

Voicing support for moving the embassy to Jerusalem has become a tradition for presidential hopefuls. Republicans Bush and John McCain and Democrats Al Gore, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry all spoke during their presidential campaigns in favor of relocating the embassy to Jerusalem in line with the 1995 law.

This year is no different. Republican candidates Texas Gov. Rick Perry, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich have all pledged to move the embassy to Jerusalem – in the case of Bachman and Gingrich, on their first day in office.

Gingrich has listed six executive orders which he says he will sign on day one. Apart from the Jerusalem move, they will:

-- Eliminate 39 White House “czars”

-- Reauthorize the Mexico City policy, which prohibits U.S. aid to organizations that promote or perform abortions around the world (The regulation was instituted by President Reagan in 1984, reversed by President Clinton in 1993, revived by President Bush in 2001, and rescinded by President Obama in 2009.).

-- Restore conscience clause protections for healthcare workers, to ensure none can be forced to perform abortions of other procedures they find morally or ethically objectionable based on religious teaching

-- End the Attorney General’s “assault on the states” by halting all immigration-related lawsuits against states immediately. (Gingrich also pledges to “secure the border by Jan. 1, 2014 by any means necessary.”)

-- Approve the Keystone pipeline project.