Israel has allocated land for the US to build a permanent embassy in Jerusalem, reinforcing the Israeli claim to the city in the face of Palestinian opposition.
US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar and Israeli Minister of Construction and Housing Haim Katz signed the agreement at a ceremony full of religious rhetoric in Jerusalem on Wednesday.
It is the latest step in US President Donald Trump’s drive to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, breaking with seven decades of precedent in which diplomats posted to Israel were based in Tel Aviv. That is the norm for the majority of foreign missions in Israel.
At the signing event, Mr Saar said the decision to begin work on a permanent embassy makes the initial relocation of the mission in 2018 “even deeper and more enduring”. The new plot is on the Allenby Compound, an abandoned military base in the south of Jerusalem.
“This agreement is another clear message to our enemies: the bond between Israel and the US is stronger than ever, stronger than any threat,” said Mr Saar.
Mr Huckabee said the project was an “irreversible decision” that “once and for all we will set our flag in a massive amount of concrete so that nobody will ever try to move that flag from Jerusalem and take it away from the proper capital”.
“It’s not just [Mr Trump] that made the decision, I’d say it was God that made that decision 3,800 years ago, and we finally got around to acknowledging what had been determined long before the US came along,” he said.
Mr Trump moved the US embassy to Jerusalem during his first term, when he also recognised Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is occupied Syrian territory.
During his second term, Mr Trump has continued to back Israel in an unprecedented manner, most recently by launching attacks on Iran that fulfilled a long-held goal of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Mr Trump also appointed Mr Huckabee, a pastor and governor in the US, who is a staunch defender of Israel. He received honorary citizenship from a settler council in the occupied West Bank last year and regularly cites the Bible as a reason for his support of Israel.
The pace of settlement has vastly increased since the Gaza war broke out, with violence by settlers and the Israeli military against Palestinians also rising dramatically. During this period, the US embassy began offering consular services in Israeli settlements for the first time. Mr Trump also lifted sanctions imposed on a small number of Israeli settlers by the administration of his predecessor, Joe Biden.
However, US-Israeli relations have become strained over a diplomatic push towards a peace deal with Iran, led in large part by Vice President JD Vance.
Mr Vance, widely considered to represent Mr Trump’s more isolationist voters, lashed out at Israeli critics of US efforts to find a peace deal. “Donald J Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time," he said.
“If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world.”
Palestinians want East Jerusalem to be the capital of their own independent state. The eastern part of the city has been occupied by Israel since 1967. Most western allies of the US say the status of the city is a question to be resolved through negotiations.
