Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

U.S. Envoy Condemns Jailing Of Palestinian For Selling East Jerusalem Property To Jews

The U.S. ambassador to Israel called on Palestinians on Wednesday to free an American-Palestinian who, the envoy said, was detained for “selling land to a Jew,” apparently violating a long-standing Palestinian ban on selling land to Israelis.

Through its official Wafa news agency, the Palestinian Authority has accused property dealer Issam Akel, a U.S. citizen, of attempting to sell a property in East Jerusalem without permission of his business partners or the authorities. The Wafa report did not identify the intended buyer.

Palestinian law bars selling land to “a hostile state or any of its citizens,” and requires the permission of the Palestinain Authority for all land sales in East Jerusalem.

Land sales in the Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem, are highly fraught for Palestinians, who see Israeli efforts to buy up land as part of a plot to cement control. Around 500,000 Israelis live in settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, which most foreign powers consider a violation of international law against settling occupied land.

“The Pal(estinian) Authority has been holding US citizen Isaam Akel in prison for ~2 months. His suspected ‘crime’? Selling land to a Jew,” U.S. Ambassador David Friedman wrote on Twitter.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.