The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel today filed an objection to the Jerusalem District Planning Committee, the United States Ambassador to Israel, Thomas R. Nides, and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken against the plan to build the US embassy in Jerusalem on illegally confiscated Palestinian Land.

The objection was filed by Adalah’s Legal Director Suhad Bishara on behalf of 12 of the descendants of the original Palestinian owners of the land upon which the State Department is seeking to build. These descendants include four US citizens, three Jordanian residents, and five East Jerusalem residents.

Israel confiscated the land from the original owners using the 1950 Israeli Absentees’ Property Law. Archival records, found in the Israeli State Archives and published by Adalah in July 2022, clearly prove that the land was owned by Palestinian families and leased temporarily to British Mandate authorities before the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.

The objection was sent to the United States Ambassador to Israel and the US Secretary of State with a letter emphasizing that if the US proceeds with this plan, it will be a full-throated endorsement of Israel’s illegal confiscation of private Palestinian property and the State Department will become an active participant in violating the private property rights of its own citizens.

The Israeli-US plan was submitted to the Israeli planning authorities in February 2022, whereby four State Department officials participated in, as drafted by the Chicago-based architectural firm Krueck Sexton Partners, in collaboration with the Israeli company Yigal Levy Architects.

US State Department officials have recently claimed that the US has not yet made a decision as to whether or not to move forward with this construction plan and that they are still deciding between use of the Allenby Barracks or the alternative ‘Arnona site’ that is being advanced simultaneously, stating that they have “not decided on which site to pursue”. However, State Department Representatives clarified that “the State Department needs to develop both properties…We cannot commit to this or that site until we have ownership and possession of the site….Once a site is chosen we will use that site for the Embassy and we will use the other site as well. We need these two properties, we have a large number of employees in Israel.”

In the objection, Adalah argued that the confiscation of the land on which the US Diplomatic Compound is to be built violates international law, in particular, Article 46 of The Hague Regulations. These regulations state the need to respect the right of private property and explicitly prohibit the confiscation of private property. Adalah emphasized that the 1950 Israeli Absentees’ Property Law is one of the most arbitrary, sweeping, discriminatory, and draconian law enacted in the state of Israel. The law was drafted with racist motives and its sole purpose was to expropriate the assets of Palestinians – both refugees and internally displaced persons.

Adalah further argued that the implementation of the plan is a violation of international law, just as moving the embassy to Jerusalem and declaring it the capital of Israel was in the first instance. This violates the city’s special status under international law. Under UN General Assembly resolutions, Jerusalem has a special separate status (corpus separatum). Moving the embassy to Jerusalem, regardless of where it is located or will be located, ignores the international consensus as to the city’s special status and signals the approval of Israel’s illegal annexation.

Source: Palestine News & Info Agency