Middle East

LIVE: US embassy opens in Jerusalem sparking Palestinian protests

US embassy is moving from Tel Aviv to Arnona neighbourhood in West Jerusalem which Israel captured in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

Arnona is located within the 1949 Armistice Agreement Line signed between Israel and neighbouring Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria.

Not much about this calm neighbourhood, except that is known as an area where driving schools train their pupils and take them for drive tests.

Between 1948 and 1967, Arnona which circles like a balloon, was no man's land. Jordanian officers on the eastern side, and Israeli on the western side.

West Jerusalem is also known for Palestinians as the Arab Jerusalem consisted of five major neighbourhoods pre-1948 war: al-Talbiyah, al-Baqa'a, al-Qatamun, Mamilla, the German colony.

Historians who studied West Jerusalem showed that during the late Ottoman empire rule and the beginning of the British mandate in the 1920s, Palestinians families living in the Old City of Jerusalem started to build houses on the western hills of Jerusalem.

This was due to an increase in transportation, banking, mail, and franchising, that Palestinian families could afford living outside the city walls.

Some of the houses in West Jerusalem are still intact, and visitors could still read the names of their Arab owners atop of the doors, or read verses of Quran, used as a blessing for the house.

The US embassy would move in a temporary location in Arnona just for the ceremony and to cut the ribbon. It is a new build, and it was opened in 2010, and the plan is to find a permanent location.

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