The State Department’s telephone directory for the first time is listing the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem as a diplomatic post inside Israel.
The U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv has traditionally been included under “Israel” in the directory, but Jerusalem has been listed with no country at all.
Sen. Daniel Moynihan (D-N.Y.), who recently received the landmark May 1988 version of the directory, said last week that the State Department had previously denied Israel “recognition of their capital city, Jerusalem,” as well as “denied it is their city at all.”
Moynihan raised the issue in 1984, at a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, At the time, Moynihan asked then-Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Lawrence Eagleburger why Jerusalem was treated differently than every other diplomatic post abroad.
Moynihan said that Eagleburger, now president of Kissinger Associates, assured him that the change would be made.
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