 Periodically the subject of embassies in Jerusalem makes the news. One of the foreign policy highlights of former President Trump's term in office for example was his decision to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The move was highly controversial with Palestinians threatening to set the regional light in response. For a lengthy explanation about why recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital and moving embassies there is the thorniest of thorny subjects please check out my video about the international community's opinion on the status of Jerusalem. I'll leave a link in the description. Today though let's talk about the situation as it stands at the date I'm recording this which is the start of 2023. As I mentioned Jerusalem is now home to an American embassy. There's also the embassy of Kosovo which is located on King George Street. There's the embassy of Guatemala which is located in the Malcha Technology Park which is in South Jerusalem and there are a few states such as the Czech Republic who are actively considering moving their Israeli embassies to Jerusalem. But if you were to look up embassies in Jerusalem on google maps you might be surprised to see a longer list of diplomatic missions haven't made such a stir in the news. What are these diplomatic missions about exactly? For instance there's the Consulate General of Spain on Machal Street in Jerusalem. Italy has a consulate general on Katztaf Benovember Street in the German colony and Sweden has a consulate general located in Sheikh Jarrah near the American colony hotel. You might drive past some of these properties in Jerusalem, see the characteristic plaques and national flags and assume that these were embassies in Jerusalem that just never made the news. But this isn't the case. The spoiler for this video is that none of these diplomatic missions are actually accredited to the state of Israel. For a little bit more detail stick around. To understand the nature of these unusual diplomatic missions let's firstly talk about how diplomatic missions work in less controversial parts of the world. The diplomatic mission that most people are familiar with are embassies. If a government were a company then embassies would be sort of like the company's head office in a certain geography. Sometimes the country only has a need for one office. In our example this would be an embassy without any consulates operating under it. In other instances the political and trade relationship between the two countries might be such little significance that the country doesn't see the need to open an embassy there at all. In other cases still a country will use its embassy in another country to provide representation to a country that it doesn't have an extensive relationship. This is called a non-resident embassy. One of countless modern examples of this would be the mission of Afghanistan to the Republic of Ireland. Its British embassy located in London is also its non-resident mission to Ireland. If Afghanistan saw Ireland is important enough it would probably open up a new embassy in Dublin but until that happens the mission in London does both jobs. Let's consider cases where a country might have a more far-reaching relationship with another country. For this example let's consider the example of Ireland and the USA. The countries have a significant political and trade relationship and the USA is a rather big place. In situations like these it's not practical for a country to cover an entire country from a single embassy. This is especially the case where the sending country has a large expat community in the receiving country and therefore I can expect to have a significant caseload of consular matters such as issuing and renewing passports which is after all one of the key functions of diplomatic missions. So the country chooses consulates and consulate generals in that country and sometimes also honoree consulates. In other words it establishes its own diplomatic network in the receiving country with its own internal hierarchy with the embassy at the top. Consulates are like local offices of an embassy and in the normal practice they are subordinate to the embassy which means that the ambassador of the embassy is sort of the boss in the country and has responsibility and authority over his or her consuls and consul generals. Typically the embassy is situated in the receiving country's seat of government and the consulates are located in significant cities or really wherever it makes the most sense for that country to have ears and visa issuing stamps on the ground. The distinction between a consulate and a consulate general if you're wondering is less clear-cut but typically a consulate general is one step higher than a regular consulate on the diplomatic packing order. Finally countries sometimes appoint honoree consuls to give them exclusive or supplementary representation in a country. Honoree consuls are sort of like amateur and usually unpaid diplomats who typically undertake their representational duties as a sort of sideline. In exchange for fostering connections between two countries they enjoy some diplomatic privileges and get to hand out Freire Roche at 20 dinner parties. Sounds like fun no? So let's go back to the Ireland-America diplomatic relationship. This will help us to understand how normal diplomatic networks work and why the situation in Jerusalem is so anomalous. Here's a real-world example. Ireland's embassy to the US is located in Washington DC which is of course America's capital. But Ireland also has consulates in Austin, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, LA, New York and San Francisco. In addition to that honoree consuls help plug the geographic gaps. Together the network ensures that Ireland has political representation and can provide consular services throughout a rather big country. As explained in a previous video, the international consensus position remains that the city of Jerusalem should be governed as a special international protectorate termed the corpus separatum, which means the separated body in Latin. Under this idealized version of foreign relations it makes sense to open tentative quasi embassies which have representative power to the city of Jerusalem rather than the state of Israel even though the state of Israel exercises sovereignty over Jerusalem. Some of the consulates in Jerusalem serve as de facto representative offices to the Palestinian authority or the PA. This is especially true for missions that are based on the east of the green line such as the consulate general of Sweden. Under the prevailing international worldview, Israel's sovereignty over east Jerusalem is illegal and null and void and therefore I guess it makes sense that they can put diplomatic offices there that liaise between all parties or just the PA. Some countries have missions to the Palestinian authority which are based in PA controlled areas like Area A for instance Ramallah. An example would be Ireland's representative office of the PA which is situated in Ramallah while others are based in Jerusalem. While it may sound like a conspiracy theory to claim that Jerusalem is full of diplomatic missions which deny that Israel is legitimate sovereign over the city and serve effectively as representative missions to the PA this is actually pretty much the case. Because these consulates and consulate generals are sort of self-standing entities with a unique status they also do not report to their country's embassy. As I explained previously under the normal course of affairs a consulate or a consulate general will be subordinate to the country's embassy in whatever country that's hosting these missions. However because the status of the missions in Jerusalem is unique that's not the case. Rather the country's embassies and Jerusalem consulates are sort of parallel but independent operations both reporting to the government's foreign ministry but independently. The consulate general of France in Jerusalem for instance reports directly to the French foreign ministry and not to its embassy in Tel Aviv. It has jurisdiction over Jerusalem the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and does not have official diplomatic relations with the state of Israel. Until recently the United States maintained a consulate general on a grown street whose purpose was to maintain diplomatic relations with the Palestinian authority. Somewhat recently that was subsumed into a newly created Palestinian affairs unit housed within the U.S. embassy much to the disappointment of Palestinians but until this policy shift which took place under the Trump administration the U.S. practice in this regard mirrored that of other countries with diplomatic missions in Jerusalem. One mission to the Palestinian authority or the city of Jerusalem, one to Israel and no subordination between the two. I could go through every consulate and consulate general in Jerusalem in total there are eight of them but suffice to say that a very similar picture would emerge in each case. If you want to learn more about this interesting topic then I'd recommend an article entitled Jerusalem already has plenty of embassies just not to Israel. It was published by Elon Aslan Lavi in the tower a few years ago and I'll leave a link in the video description. It has more detail than I shared here. I hope that was useful and if you'd like to get more videos about everything related to Jerusalem and Israel do feel free to subscribe to the YouTube channel. Thank you for watching and listening.