Born in Jerusalem...

US to review Jerusalem birthplace law - US News | Latest US News Headlines | The Irish Times - Tue, Apr 22, 2014 http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/us/us-to-review-jerusalem-birthplace-law-1.1769251

Born in Jerusalem...

The US Supreme Court yesterday agreed to weigh the constitutionality of a law that was designed to allow American citizens born in Jerusalem – the historic holy city claimed by Israelis and Palestinians – to have Israel listed as their birthplace on passports.
The case concerns a long-standing US foreign policy that the president – and not Congress – has sole authority to state who controls Jerusalem.
Seeking to remain neutral on the hotly contested issue, the US State Department allows passports to name Jerusalem as a place of birth, but no country name is included.

US constitution
The department, which issues passports and reports to the president, has declined to enforce the law passed by Congress in 2002, saying it violated the separation of executive and legislative powers laid out in the US constitution.
In court papers, President Barack Obama’s administration said taking sides on the issue could “critically compromise the ability of the United States to work with Israelis, Palestinians and others in the region to further the peace process”.
The government has noted that US citizens born in other places in the region where sovereignty has not been established, including the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, are similarly prevented from stating a country of birth on their passports.
In 2003, Ari and Naomi Zivotofsky, the parents of US citizen Menachem Zivotofsky, who was born in Jerusalem in 2002, filed a lawsuit seeking to enforce the law.
They would like their son’s passport to say that he was born in Israel.
Since the founding of Israel in 1948, US presidents have declined to state a position on the status of Jerusalem, leaving it as one of the thorniest issues to be resolved in possible future Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
When Republican President George W Bush signed the 2002 law as part of a broader foreign affairs Bill, he said that if construed as mandatory rather than advisory, it would “impermissibly interfere” with the president’s authority to speak for the country on international affairs.
An estimated 50,000 American citizens were born in Jerusalem and could, if they requested it, list Israel as their birthplace if the law was enforced