FOREIGN POLICY/ISRAEL/PALESTINE/STATE/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “In two months, the United States plans to open a new embassy to fulfill President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
There’s just one problem: The embassy may be in Jerusalem, but it may not be fully in Israel.
The diplomatic compound that will serve as the American Embassy until a permanent site is found lies partly in a contested zone known as No Man’s Land.
No Man’s Land encompasses the area between the armistice lines drawn at the end of the 1948-49 war and was claimed by Jordan and Israel. Israel won full control of it in the 1967 war, so the United Nations and much of the world consider it occupied territory.
The State Department has avoided taking a clear position on the matter but relies on the fact that Israel and Jordan had informally divided the contested enclave… The Palestinians are less equivocal… The dispute could turn the American ambassador, David M. Friedman, an avid supporter of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, into a new kind of diplomatic settler himself.”
-Isabel Kershner, “New U.S. Embassy May Be in Jerusalem, but Not in Israel,” The New York Times online, Mar. 7, 2018