The consular section there, which opened in 2010, is the newest and most secure United States facility in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, according to a State Department official. The official added that there was no change to the mandate of the consulate general, which is housed in a separate, historic building in central Jerusalem and engages in a wide range of political, economic, cultural, and educational contacts in the West Bank and Gaza, as well as in Jerusalem, and also serves American citizens there.

Life in Arnona seemed to be continuing quietly Sunday morning. Across the street from the American consular compound, Naomi Elook, 63, an Israel cosmetician, runs a small beauty salon in the basement of the apartment building where she has lived for 30 years. A young Muslim woman in a flowered head scarf was waiting for a treatment, and Ms. Elook said that 80 percent of her clients were Palestinians from East Jerusalem.

“I am happy about the embassy move,” she said. “It will enrich the neighborhood and bring more security.”

The Arnona compound sits between the predominantly Jewish West Jerusalem and East Jerusalem, which Israel captured from Jordan in the 1967 war and then annexed in a move that was never internationally recognized. But the compound has always been in Israel’s possession and so is not, experts say, considered occupied territory.

“There are infinite ways in which the embassy move is horrible, counterproductive, destructive,” said Daniel Seidemann, an Israeli attorney who specializes in Jerusalem affairs. “But the site is not the problem.”

Within the compound sits a decades-old former hotel, aptly named The Diplomat, which the Americans rent out as a facility for elderly Russian-speaking immigrants. Laundry hangs on lines outside some of the windows. One resident, Charna Kommar, 80, who arrived from Moscow in 2004, seemed pleased with the prospect of her new neighbor, saying it was “very important” to have the embassy in Jerusalem.

Another small stone building in the compound houses the head office of “Burgers Bar,” a popular Israeli food chain.