The Trump administration is expected to announce that it will allow US citizens born in Jerusalem to list Israel as their country of birth on their passports, according to a Wednesday report.
An unnamed US official told Politico that the policy change could be announced as soon as Thursday. The State Department declined a request for comment.
Current US policy allows American citizens born in Jerusalem to identify only the city as their birthplace in their passports, unless they were born before Israel’s creation in 1948. The State Department policy, held up by a 2015 Supreme Court case, is designed to avoid having Washington take a position on the final status of Jerusalem, the eastern part of which Palestinians claim as their future capital.
That policy has remained in place even after the US recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in 2017, despite growing pressure from pro-Israel lawmakers and groups in the US to allow Israel on the passports. However, the State Department said at the time that it would not revise the position.
The policy change only affects the words written on the passport. Israelis born in Jerusalem are already recognized as being from Israel by US agencies.
The new policy will allow Jerusalem-born US passport holders to choose whether they want Israel to be included as their country of birth, Politico said. No country option will be given to those who would like their country of birth to be documented as Palestine, though those born in Jerusalem before 1948 may have “Jerusalem, Palestine” on their passports.
Previous administrations often struggled with the studied neutrality over the city, routinely making embarrassing corrections to documents identifying the city as “Jerusalem, Israel.”
The reported decision comes amid a flurry of gestures and diplomatic activity seemingly aimed at shoring up pro-Israel Jewish and Evangelical Republican voters, with days to go before the November 3 presidential election.
The report of the policy change came just hours after Israel and the US signed an agreement extending their scientific cooperation, a move viewed by some as a first step toward American recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank.
The Trump administration has also sought to expand the list of Arab and Muslim-majority countries to normalize relations with Israel in the final months of its first term. On Friday, Sudan agreed to become the third country to do so in recent months, following the lead of the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain after weeks of pressure from Washington, which conditioned removing Khartoum from its blacklist of state terror sponsors on Sudan making peace with the Jewish state.
Wow. It took him four years to do this. Watching fake fox and tweeting keeps him real busy. Can you spell PANDERING
ReplyDelete10:07
ReplyDeleteSo why didn't the black president "pander" to the Jewish people?
Not only did that Black guy not pander but stuck a huge knife in the backs of the Jewish people by funding the Iranian murderers and slapping Israel in the UN on his way out the door ..
Yeah, What an anti-semite Barry was. My computer repair guy, knows a guy who is cousins with someone named shmukusvky, who wanted to be a Navy vet, who says his hard drive has proof that Barry the antisemite made millions in illegal profit on those iron domes he supplied to Israel for free then used that money to pay to pay sleepyJoe to have those alleged BinLaden Navy Seals killed.
ReplyDeleteSay Anonymous... Are't you Lessor on the other thread ?
ReplyDeleteOf course you are, Biden lover..
Can you spell CRIMINAL ?? Like in Ukraine and China.Of course you can , says Kamala. Haaaaaaaaaaa.!!
Now please write an essay on:
HOW I GOT 5 BIG HOMES ON A GOVERNMWNT SALARY ... Duh..
DERBY & Yenk... running to a Biden rally... We want a seat...