US signs agreement to build permanent embassy in Jerusalem

JERUSALEM - The United States on July 1 signed an agreement to build a new embassy compound in Jerusalem, a move that Israel said reflected the “unbreakable alliance” between the countries.

During his first term, US President Donald Trump recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December 2017 and ordered the relocation of Washington’s diplomatic mission from Tel Aviv.

But the services were spread across several locations in Jerusalem until a single permanent site could be found.

US ambassador Mike Huckabee said during a signing ceremony at Israel’s foreign ministry that Washington “recognises Jerusalem as the eternal, indigenous, and forever capital of the Jewish people”.

“We are going to plant our flag, our American flag, on the soil of Jerusalem for a permanent and a brand new embassy compound that will serve as our mothership of diplomatic activities here in Israel,” he added.

“I would say God made that decision 3,800 years ago, and we finally got around to acknowledging what had been determined long before the United States of America came along.”

The embassy will be built at the Allenby compound in southern Jerusalem.

Trump’s 2017 decision broke with decades of US policy, under which Jerusalem’s final status was expected to be determined through negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.

Jerusalem has long been one of the most contested cities in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

After Israel captured east Jerusalem during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, it declared the city its undivided capital, a claim that has not been widely recognised internationally.

Palestinians seek east Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state.

Because of these competing claims, most countries established their embassies in Tel Aviv, maintaining that Jerusalem’s status should be resolved through peace negotiations in accordance with international law and relevant United Nations resolutions.

Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said the agreement to build Washington’s permanent embassy in Jerusalem underscored the “unbreakable alliance” between the two countries.

“President Trump’s historic decision in 2017 to move the embassy to Jerusalem set the record straight,” he said at the signing ceremony.

“And today, with the agreement to begin building a permanent embassy complex, that decision becomes even deeper and more enduring.”

The Israeli rights group Adalah, however, denounced the construction of the embassy at the allocated site, saying it “enshrines a profound, historical injustice”.

The site “is located on land confiscated by Israel from Palestinian landowners under the discriminatory 1950 Absentees’ Property Law”, it said in a statement, adding that it had previously filed an objection on behalf of the descendants of the original Palestinian owners, some of whom are US and Jordanian citizens.

By proceeding with its plans, “the US government directly endorses Israel’s unlawful mechanisms of dispossession and displacement, violating the fundamental property rights of the original Palestinian owners and their descendants, in direct defiance of international law”, the group said.

The embassy agreement comes after the United States and Israel fought alongside each other in their military campaign against Iran, and also follows reports of tensions between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over efforts to end the war. AFP