Former US Embassy apartment in Tel Aviv sold for $67 million, highest ever for Israeli property
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
(JTA) — The former U.S. ambassador’s residence in Tel Aviv sold for $67 million in July, according to an Israeli tax record made public on Monday, the highest price ever for an Israeli property.
The sale helped cement the embassy’s controversial move to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv authorized by President Donald Trump while also recognizing the former city as Israel’s capital.
In September, the Israeli daily Globes reported that the property’s buyer was Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino magnate and major pro-Israel Republican donor who supported the embassy move. After the State Department informally confirmed that the buyer was Adelson, U.S. lawmakers looked into “whether the deal complied with regulations,” The Associated Press reported.
The U.S. Embassy said in August that “the buyer was selected solely on the basis of having submitted the highest and best offer.”
Many Israelis and Jewish Americans rejoiced at the embassy move — one promised by Trump during his 2016 campaign. The Palestinians and their supporters, who want authority over part of Jerusalem in an eventual two-state solution deal, decried it.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
