The Government of Israel notified the United States yesterday that in the future it would not accept visa applications from American Consular personnel in Jerusalem whose passports were stamped “Jerusalem, Palestine.”
The practice arises from the refusal of the United States and other major powers to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Regular United States passports renewed at the Jerusalem Consulate also bear the term.
Tourists do not require visas and the restriction would presumably apply only to officials assigned to the American Consulate General in Jerusalem. A consulate official said that the phrase was used on some 200 to 300 passports issued annually to American citizens in Israeli Jerusalem and Jordan Jerusalem and on service passports to officials assigned to the Consulate.
The deadlock stems from a declaration in the 1948 United Nations partition recommendation, calling for the internationalization of both old and new Jerusalem. The proposal became a dead letter after the Israeli War of Liberation during which Jordan seized and held the Old City.
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