Israel Seeks to Overturn Long-Established Practice Regarding the Operation of Foreign Diplomatic Missions in East Jerusalem

In Jerusalem, many events take place unseen by the media, especially events related to diplomatic affairs.

Foreigners working in Jerusalem, either in international institutions or diplomatic missions, do not speak publicly about their relations with the Israeli government. European diplomatic missions are under strict instructions not to say anything that casts Israel in a negative light.

Israel, however, is not reticent about voicing its displeasure. It does not hide its desire to restrict diplomatic activity in Jerusalem, especially East Jerusalem. Despite the diplomatic immunity that consulates in Jerusalem have had since the 19th century, Israel expects all diplomats to follow its dictates. Those diplomatic missions report directly to their capitals and don’t go through their embassies in Tel Aviv, which angers the Israelis. International agencies, too, have been keeping a low profile; in many cases, they have stopped funding projects that support Palestinians in Jerusalem for fear of angering Israel.

Israeli Foreign Ministry officials often deliberately tighten the noose on diplomats by dragging their feet on granting them residency visas. Informed sources who requested anonymity said that the ambassador of a European country in East Jerusalem was only granted a two-month visa by former Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz, which is very unusual. Only when Katz was replaced by Gideon Sa’ar, in the latest shuffle after the recent firing of the Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, was the ambassador granted the customary two-year residency visa.1

These complications and procedures have escalated since Israel declared its genocidal war on the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023.

Back on May 27, 2024, Israel decided to prevent the Spanish consulate in Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem, from providing services to Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip after Spain, together with Ireland and Norway, recognized the Palestinian state, which sparked widespread fury in Israel.2

On November 7, 2024, Israeli police forcibly entered the premises of a French-owned church and arrested two consulate staff members who have diplomatic immunity (see “Israel Violates French Church Sovereignty and Diplomatic Laws and Norms in Jerusalem, Angering France”).

On November 13, 2024, the Yedioth Ahronoth supplement published an article in Hebrew (“Nekama Metuka,” [Sweet Revenge]) about the Jerusalem Municipality’s decision to cancel the diplomatic parking space of the Turkish Cultural Center in Jerusalem. The five spots on al-Zahra Street had been obtained in 2017 through an agreement with the Israeli Foreign Ministry. The newspaper reported that the parking spaces had been released for public use. The paper noted that no response was received regarding this undiplomatic behavior.3

The Hebrew newspaper quoted the racist Deputy Mayor Arieh King:

This is yet another case of allowing ideology to dominate policy even when it is against a country’s own interests.

This incident comes at a time when Israel is openly waging a diplomatic battle to change the historical reality of Jerusalem in general and to minimize diplomatic communication between foreign countries and Palestinians in the rest of the occupied West Bank. It is enacting legislation to limit this activity, including the Consulates Law, which was passed by the Knesset on October 29, 2024.5 According to the terms of the law, Israel will not allow a foreign political entity to open or operate a non-embassy mission in Jerusalem.6 (The law would not change the status of those non-embassy offices that already exist.)

Most countries do not officially recognize Israel’s 1980 annexation of East Jerusalem, which it militarily occupied in 1967. For this reason, they do not establish embassies in East Jerusalem, opting instead to base them in Tel Aviv, despite the fact that Israel has declared Jerusalem as its capital city.

Only five countries—the US, Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo, and Papua New Guinea—have embassies in Jerusalem at this time.7 (It is worth noting that several countries—Turkey, the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Sweden, Italy, Belgium, Greece, and many Arab countries, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria—had consulates in Sheikh Jarrah before Israel was established in 1948.) When the US, under then President Donald Trump, reversed decades of policy by recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moving the US Embassy there as of May 14, 2018, the separate US Consulate, which had long been located in Arab East Jerusalem and served Palestinians from the occupied West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza, was merged into the Embassy, which was located in Jewish West Jerusalem. The existence of the US Consulate also had diplomatic significance, since it offered a hope of a possibility of a future Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. As articulated by NBC News, “It [the elimination of the US Consulate in East Jerusalem] sent a clear message: Relations with the Palestinians had been reduced to a portfolio within the American-Israeli relationship.”8

The Consulates Law is largely meant to prevent the reestablishment of this US Consulate (something which the Biden administration had promised to do)9 and to thereby shore up the permanence of “united Jerusalem” serving as the capital of Israel only.

Dimitri Diliani, a member of the Fatah Revolutionary Council and an activist in the reform Fatah movement, said that the Consulates Law exceeds the Knesset’s legal authority and powers, represents a flagrant violation of international law, and constitutes a blatant challenge to the US administration’s commitment to reopening its consulate in the city. Diliani asserted that every official meeting between Palestinians and Americans includes discussion of the demand that the US consulate in Jerusalem be reopened.10

Israel’s actions against internationals, whether diplomatic staff or others working in Jerusalem, represent its latest efforts to unilaterally assert control over a city that has resisted the efforts of every aspiring conqueror to dominate or negate others in the city. Israel has violated international law by confiscating the lands of a UN agency, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), with plans to turn it into an illegal settlement, and now it feels emboldened to overturn centuries-long precedent governing the operation of diplomatic missions in the holy city. Will it succeed?