The Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, , November 8, 1995, 109 Stat. 398. is a public law of the United States passed by the 104th Congress on October 23, 1995. The proposed law was adopted by the Senate (93–5),On the passage of , the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, and the House (374–37).On the passage of , the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, The Act became law without a presidential signature on November 8, 1995.
The Act recognized Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel and called for Jerusalem to remain an undivided city. Its purpose was to set aside funds for the relocation of the Embassy of the United States in Israel from its location in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, by May 31, 1999. For this purpose, it withheld 50% of the funds appropriated to the State Department specifically for "Acquisition and Maintenance of Buildings Abroad" as allocated in fiscal year 1999 until the United States Embassy in Jerusalem had officially opened.
Despite passage, the law allowed the President to invoke a six-month waiver of the application of the law, and reissue the waiver every six months on "national security" grounds. The waiver was repeatedly renewed by Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama. President Donald Trump signed a waiver in June 2017. On June 5, 2017, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a resolution commemorating the 50th anniversary of reunification of Jerusalem (also known as the Israeli annexation of East Jerusalem) by 90–0. The resolution reaffirmed the Jerusalem Embassy Act and called upon the President and all United States officials to abide by its provisions. On December 6, 2017, Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital,Proclamation 9683 of December 6, 2017, 82 FR 58331 and ordered the planning of the relocation of the embassy. However, following the announcement, Trump signed an embassy waiver again, delaying the move, as mandated by the Act, by at least six months.Presidential Determination No. 2018-2 December 6, 2017 82 FR 61127 Legally, however, the U.S. embassy can be moved at any time without reliance on the Act.
On February 23, 2018, President Trump announced that the US Embassy in Israel would reopen at the Arnona consular services site of the then US Consulate-General in Jerusalem. The United States Embassy officially relocated to Jerusalem on May 14, 2018, to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the Israeli Declaration of Independence.
Background
Jerusalem holds unique spiritual and religious interests, such as Holy Places and religious buildings or sites, among the world's Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Following World War I, the victorious Principal Allied Powers recognized these as "a sacred trust of civilization", and stipulated that the existing rights and claims connected with them should be safeguarded in perpetuity, under international guarantee... The terms of the British Balfour Declaration were included in the Mandate for Palestine by the League of Nations. The US government was not a party to these agreements; but stated official foreign policy in 1919 was to 'acquiesce' in the Balfour Declaration, but not officially support Zionism.Walworth (1986) 473-83, esp. p. 481; Melvin I. Urofsky, American Zionism from Herzl to the Holocaust, (1995) ch. 6.. On September 21, 1922, the US Congress passed a joint resolution stating its support for a homeland in Palestine for the Jewish people but not at the expense of other cultures present at the time.. This occurred virtually the same day the Palestine Mandate was approved by the League of Nations; although official government findings about the affected peoples' choices concerning self-determination were available in government circles, they were withheld from the public until the following December. US foreign policy remained unchanged. These competing nationalist claims led to increasing civil violence during the inter-war period; following World War II, the "Question of Palestine" was placed before the United Nations, as the League's successor agency.
On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 181, the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine; it contained a recommendation that Jerusalem be placed under a special international regime, a corpus separatum, administered by the United Nations and be separate from both the Jewish and Arab states envisioned. Following the conflict that ensued, cease-fires and the 1949 Armistice Agreements were negotiated and accepted by both sides. One of these resulted, in part, in a temporary division of Jerusalem. The relevant Armistice Agreement with Jordan was signed on April 3, 1949, but it was considered internationally as having no legal effect on the continued validity of the provisions of the partition resolution for the internationalization of Jerusalem.See "Corpus Separatum §33 Jerusalem" Marjorie M. Whiteman editor, US State Department Digest of International Law, vol. 1 (Washington, DC: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1963) pages 593-4;Foreign relations of the United States, 1948. The Near East, South Asia, and Africa (in two parts) Volume V, Part 2, Page 748; "Governing Jerusalem: Again on the world's agenda", by Ira Sharkansky, Wayne State University Press, 1996, , page 23; and John Quigley, "The Legal Status Of Jerusalem Under International Law, The Turkish Yearbook Of International Relations, [VOL. XXIV, 1994] pp 11-25 On April 25, 1949, King Abdullah officially changed the name of Transjordan to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. He had secured the support of Great Britain (albeit qualified—Great Britain did not recognize the incorporation of East Jerusalem, maintaining that it ought to be part of a corpus separatum, an international enclave).
On December 5, 1949, the Israeli Cabinet, meeting in Tel Aviv, declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel, and on January 23, 1950, the First Knesset proclaimed that "Jerusalem was, and had always been, the capital of Israel."Martin Gilbert, Jerusalem in the Twentieth Century (New York, 1996), pp. 243-244. Moreover, on April 24, 1950, the Jordan House of Deputies and House of Notables, in a joint session, adopted a resolution annexing the West Bank and Jerusalem. Because the status of Jerusalem had been included previously in the UN Partition Plan, most countries did not accept this Israeli position, and most embassies have been located elsewhere.
The United States has stated that its policy on Jerusalem refers specifically to the geographic boundaries of the area that were set out for the "City of Jerusalem", or Corpus Separatum, in Resolution 181, but since 1950, US diplomats have traveled regularly to Jerusalem from the US Embassy in Tel Aviv to conduct business with Israeli officials.Gilbert, p. 253. The United States has also stated that Jerusalem was part of Mandate Palestine, and in a de jure sense, has not since become part of any other sovereignty.Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963: Near East, 1962-1963, V. XVIII. DC: GPO, 2000, 152. Memorandum of conversation, February 7, 1963. Crawford (NE)-Campbell (IO)-Bar-Haim (Israeli Embassy) meeting: U.S. position on the status of JerusalemAfter the capture of the entire city and the adjacent West Bank in the 1967 Six-Day War, the United States again reaffirmed the desirability of establishing an international regime for the city of Jerusalem.
Advocacy for the Jerusalem Embassy Act reached a zenith during particularly critical times in negotiations for the Oslo Accords of the peace process, despite opposition from both the Israeli and American administrations.Daniel Levy, Is it Good for the Jews? , The American Prospect, June 2006 The embassy move was, and continued to be, delayed by successive United States government in order to appear neutral on the issue of Jerusalem. However, on December 6, 2017, President Donald Trump announced that the US recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and instructed the State Department to begin preparations to move the embassy.
There are allegations by a group of Palestinians that the site is owned by Palestinian Refugees whose property was confiscated by Israel in 1948.
Details The Act asserted that every country has a right to designate the capital of its choice, and that Israel has designated Jerusalem. The act notes that "the city of Jerusalem is the seat of Israel's President, Parliament, and Supreme Court, and the site of numerous government ministries and social and cultural institutions." Jerusalem is defined as the spiritual center of Judaism. Furthermore, it stipulates that since the reunification of Jerusalem in 1967, religious freedom has been guaranteed to all.
S.3(a)(2) and (3) also stated that "Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of the State of Israel; and the United States Embassy in Israel should be established in Jerusalem no later than May 31, 1999".
Although the Senate and House votes preceded visits by then Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert to Washington to celebrate the 3000th anniversary of King David's declaration of Jerusalem as the capital of the Jews,. little to no progress was achieved in the physical relocation of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem until December 2017.
Timetable Section 3 of the Act outlined the U.S. policy and set the initial parameters for the secretary of state to report in order to receive the full funding — again, with a May 1999 target deadline for the appropriations. The section also briefly stated U.S. policy concerning the matter.
The major roadblock has been the question of what effect, if any, the relocation may symbolize for other interested parties or neighboring nations involved in the ongoing and sometimes quite contentious Mid-East diplomacy and foreign relations. For this reason, since the legislation's introduction, the consensus has been that this action poses considerable risk to United States national security at home and abroad.
Constitutional separation of powers Under the Constitution of the United States the president has exclusive authority to recognize foreign sovereignty over territory.See Restatement (3rd) Foreign Relations Law of the United States, American Law Institute, 1986, §§ 203 Recognition or Acceptance of Governments and §§ 204 Recognition and Maintaining Diplomatic Relations Law of the United States. The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel concluded that the provisions of the Embassy Relocation Act "invade exclusive presidential authorities in the field of foreign affairs and are unconstitutional."
Former U.S. presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama have alluded to or explicitly stated the belief that Congressional resolutions attempting to legislate foreign policy infringe upon the executive's authority and responsibility to carry out sound and effective U.S. foreign relations.
Regarding the status of Jerusalem specifically, President Bush had deemed Congress' role as merely "advisory", stating that it "impermissibly interferes with the President's constitutional authority".Signing Statement by the President on H.R. 1646, the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, FY 2003, September 30, 2002, NARA Archives. The U.S. Constitution reserves the conduct of foreign policy to the president; resolutions of Congress, such as the ones found in the Authorization Act of 2003 that included the Jerusalem Embassy Act's provisions, makes the arguments in favor of legislating foreign policy from Congress extremely problematic if not arguably invalid for that Constitutional reason.