The U.S. Already Has an Embassy in Jerusalem—Just Not to Israel

Since Israel’s creation, the United States has kept its embassy to the Jewish state in Tel Aviv. The original rationale was to honor the clause in the UN partition plan, reaffirmed by resolutions passed in 1948 and 1949, designating Jerusalem a “corpus separatum” that would be part of neither the Jewish nor the Palestinian state. More recently, Washington’s excuse has been that it fears moving the embassy to Jerusalem—even to part of the city located in territory held by Israel before the Six-Day War—would unfairly prejudice the outcome of peace negotiations. None of this, writes Eylon Aslan-Levy, has prevented the U.S. or other Western nations from placing in Jerusalem their missions to the Palestinian Authority (PA)—whose government is situated in Ramallah: