Human rights organisations have condemned an agreement between Israel and the US to construct a permanent US embassy on stolen Palestinian land in Jerusalem.
Under a deal signed by Israel's foreign minister Gideon Sa'ar and US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee on Wednesday, the two countries allocated a site in the south of the city for the new embassy complex. The agreement grants the US control of the terrain for 99 years under a lease valued at just one dollar.
In 2017, the US became the first country to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, prompting Washington to relocate its embassy there from Tel Aviv. It has operated a temporary embassy in the city since 2018.
Speaking at the signing ceremony on Wednesday, Huckabee said that Washington recognises Jerusalem as the "eternal, indigenous and forever capital of the Jewish people".
"We are going to plant our flag, our American flag, on the soil of Jerusalem for a permanent and a brand-new embassy compound that will serve as our mothership of diplomatic activities here in Israel," he said.
Israeli legal rights group Adalah condemned the agreement, saying it "deliberately enshrines a profound historical injustice" and violates Jerusalem's international legal status, which recognises East Jerusalem to be occupied Palestinian territory and do not recognise Israel's sovereignty over the city as a whole.
The UN considers East Jerusalem part of Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967. The Palestinian Authority wants the eastern part of the city to be the capital of a future state.
Adalah, representing the descendants of the original owners, lodged a legal petition in 2023 challenging the Israeli planning authorities' allocation of the land.
The site – formerly home to the British army’s Jerusalem garrison – was originally owned by Palestinians who fled during the 1948 Nakba, after which the land was confiscated. Archival documents show that the land belonging to Palestinian families before 1948 had been leased to British authorities.
The Israeli government confiscated the land under the 1950 Israeli Absentees’ Property Law, which has been used to dispossess Palestinians who fled in 1948 and during the 1967 war.
"Building on land seized under the Absentees’ Property Law means the US government directly endorses Israel’s unlawful mechanisms of dispossession and displacement," Adalah said in a statement on Wednesday.
Ameer Dawood, a senior official at the Palestinian Colonisation and Wall Resistance Commission, called the agreement a "political act that further entrenches unilateral recognition of Israel's claims over Jerusalem".
"This move risks encouraging further Israeli measures aimed at consolidating de facto annexation and altering he city's demographic and geographic character," he told The New Arab .