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The Palestinian Authority on Thursday expressed outrage after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that “Israel” will be permitted to be listed on the passports of citizens born in Jerusalem, reversing decades of US policy.

Nabil Abu Rudeineh, the official spokesman for PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas, said in response that eastern Jerusalem is “occupied land” and that Pompeo's remarks were invalid and a blatant violation of international law and legitimacy.

Abu Rudeineh stressed that eastern Jerusalem, with its holy sites for Islam and Christianity, is a "red line" on which the security and stability of the entire region depends.

Thursday’s change in passport policy comes a day the US officially dropped its opposition to funding joint research projects in Israel which are conducted in Judea, Samaria, or the Golan Heights.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman met at Ariel University in Samaria on Wednesday to sign an agreement on scientific cooperation Wednesday, paving the way for US funding of Israeli projects regardless of their location.

The new agreement nullifies limitations imposed in the 1970s on US-Israeli research cooperation which included a territorial clause, barring the US from providing funding for projects which went beyond Israel’s pre-1967 borders.