Jul 26 2013
US Court rejects to connect Jerusalem with Israel
By Daoud Kuttab
The city of Jerusalem has many diplomatic missions that have the official title of consulate general. These include the US, most Western European and Scandinavian countries, as well as Turkey.
These diplomatic missions report directly to their capitals and they are not accountable officially to their counterparts from their country’s diplomatic missions in Israel and, more recently, in Ramallah.
This practice has been going on since the Ottoman/Turkish rule in Palestine and the region in the 19th century.
After the creation of Israel in 1948 these missions continued to operate mostly in East Jerusalem (some, like the Americans, owned property in West Jerusalem) and they have continued to work after the June 1967 occupation.
While these missions mostly served the Palestinian community politically, culturally and consular wise, the only difference after 1967 was that these missions widened their (mostly consular) services to all the population of Jerusalem. The US consulate in East Jerusalem continued to provide consular and cultural services while the building owned by the Americans in West Jerusalem’s Agron Street became the residence of the US consul-general and later housed caravans that provided space for USAID officials working in the Palestinian areas.
American citizens who lived in the Greater Jerusalem area as well as the rest of the West Bank (both Israelis and Palestinians) were restricted to the Nablus Road consulate in East Jerusalem for their consular affairs. Continue Reading »