Israel officially allocated a contested plot of land in southern Jerusalem for the construction of a new US embassy, despite opposition by Palestinians rights groups.
The announcement was made on Tuesday in a joint statement by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Foreign Minister Gideon Saar and Housing Minister Haim Katz.
“At a time when Israel and the US stand side by side in the campaign against the Iranian terrorist regime, the decision carries special significance and serves as further evidence of the strength of the relationship, the solid alliance, and the shared values and strategic partnership between the two nations,” the statement said.
US President Donald Trump made a highly contested decision to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 2017, in an unofficial recognition by his country of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
The embassy complex will be in an area known as Camp Allenby, a name that was given during the British Mandate.
The land is privately owned by Palestinian families and is part of an irrevocable endowment (waqf), but was illegally confiscated by Israel under the Absentees' Property Law, which Israel mainly uses to take over property owned by forcibly displaced Palestinians.
In 2022, the Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, Adalah, presented documents that proved the land's ownership to Palestinians before 1948, but the move went ahead anyway.
Israel and the US are engaging in a weeks-long war against Iran. The goals of the war have changed several times, from regime change to dismantling Iran's nuclear programme that Mr Trump said last year he had “annihilated”, and weakening Iran's proxies in the region.
Finalising the embassy's location may be Israel's way of capitalising on its relationship with the US at a time when the region's focus is on the war and Iran's attacks on the Gulf that have disrupted power lines and the global economy.
In the joint statement, the ministers also thanked US ambassador Mike Huckabee for his co-operation. Mr Huckabee, an evangelical Christian Zionist, has faced criticism since taking up his ambassadorship. Critics say he advocates for Israeli policies while minimising Palestinian rights. For instance, he calls the occupied West Bank by its biblical name of Judea and Samaria, a term the Israeli government prefers.
The decision comes at a time of increasing violence in the West Bank at the hands of Israeli settlers amid accusations that the Israeli government is allowing the attacks to proceed unchecked.
