The Intercept reports:

Nearly five years after President Donald Trump broke with decades of U.S. policy and international consensus to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move the U.S. Embassy there, the Biden administration is moving ahead with plans to build a permanent embassy compound in the city. Israel’s government has its headquarters in Jerusalem, but, because Palestinians also claim the city as their capital and because the city’s status remains disputed under international law, the U.S. Embassy, like those of most other countries, was previously based in Tel Aviv.

The plans for a new embassy, which the administration has quietly advanced in recent weeks, would consolidate Trump’s abrupt policy reversal and violate U.S. precedent both on the status of Jerusalem and on Israel’s ongoing illegal appropriation of Palestinian land. The new embassy would also make the U.S. government an active participant in that appropriation: The planned compound is to be built on land illegally expropriated from Palestinians, whose descendants, including several U.S. citizens, still have a claim to.

“The descendants of the landowners are all entitled to these properties under international law,” Suhad Bishara, legal director of the Israel-based human rights group Adalah, told The Intercept. “By moving forward with the plan to build the embassy at the Allenby site, the U.S. are taking an active part in the illegal confiscation of these properties, including infringing on their own citizens’ rights.” [Continue reading…]