Positions On Jerusalem - United States

United States

  • The United States views as desirable the establishing of an international regime for the city. Its final status must be resolved through negotiations and it does not recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

United States policy on Jerusalem refers specifically to the geographic boundaries of the "City of Jerusalem" based on the UN's corpus separatum proposal. De jure, Jerusalem is part of the Palestine Mandate and has not been under sovereignty of any country since. President Bush (1989–1993) stated that the United States does not believe new settlements should be built in East Jerusalem and that it does not want to see Jerusalem "divided". The Obama administration has condemned expansion of Gilo and Ramat Shlomo as well as evictions and house demolitions affecting Palestinians living in East Jerusalem.

The United States voted for the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine in November 1947 and United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 in December 1948 following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War but voted against Resolution 303 in December 1949 that reaffirmed that Jerusalem be established a corpus separatum under a special international regime to be administered by the United Nations because the U.S. regarded the plan as no longer feasible after both Israel and Jordan had established a political presence in the city. The U.S. opposed Israel's moving its capital from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem following Israel's declaration of Jerusalem as its capital in 1949 and opposed Jordan's plan to make Jerusalem its second capital announced in 1950. The U.S. opposed Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem after the 1967 war. The United States maintains a consulate in Jerusalem that deals primarily with the Palestinian Authority, while relations with the Israeli government are handled from the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv. The U.S. consulate is not accredited to the Israeli government. The United States has proposed that the future of Jerusalem should be the subject of a negotiated settlement. Subsequent administrations have maintained the same policy that Jerusalem's future not be the subject of unilateral actions that could prejudice negotiations such as moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. In 2002, Congress passed legislation that said that American citizens born in Jerusalem may list "Israel" as their country of birth, although Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama have not allowed it. The U.S. maintains six buildings in Jerusalem with a staff of 471. In 2010 the consulate had a budget of $96 million.

Read more about this topic:  Positions On Jerusalem

Famous quotes related to united states:

    In the larger view the major forces of the depression now lie outside of the United States, and our recuperation has been retarded by the unwarranted degree of fear and apprehension created by these outside forces.
    Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)

    Because of these convictions, I made a personal decision in the 1964 Presidential campaign to make education a fundamental issue and to put it high on the nation’s agenda. I proposed to act on my belief that regardless of a family’s financial condition, education should be available to every child in the United States—as much education as he could absorb.
    Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)

    The city of Washington is in some respects self-contained, and it is easy there to forget what the rest of the United States is thinking about. I count it a fortunate circumstance that almost all the windows of the White House and its offices open upon unoccupied spaces that stretch to the banks of the Potomac ... and that as I sit there I can constantly forget Washington and remember the United States.
    Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)

    Of all the nations in the world, the United States was built in nobody’s image. It was the land of the unexpected, of unbounded hope, of ideals, of quest for an unknown perfection. It is all the more unfitting that we should offer ourselves in images. And all the more fitting that the images which we make wittingly or unwittingly to sell America to the world should come back to haunt and curse us.
    Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)

    In the United States the whites speak well of the Blacks but think bad about them, whereas the Blacks talk bad and think bad about the whites. Whites fear Blacks, because they have a bad conscience, and Blacks hate whites because they need not have a bad conscience.
    Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)