The United States signed an agreement on Wednesday to build a new embassy compound in southern Jerusalem.
US ambassador Mike Huckabee said during the signing ceremony at Israel’s foreign ministry that Washington “recognizes 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 added.
The Israeli human rights group Adalah has condemned the construction of the embassy, saying in a statement that it “enshrines a profound, historical injustice” and “directly endorses Israel’s unlawful mechanisms of dispossession and displacement, violating the fundamental property rights of the original Palestinian owners and their descendants, in direct defiance of international law.”
