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US Still Committed To Reopen Jerusalem Consulate, Officials Say
US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf meets with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah on June 11, 2022. (US State Department/Twitter)

US Still Committed To Reopen Jerusalem Consulate, Officials Say

Palestinian officials are pessimistic that US President Joe Biden will honor his election pledge to reopen the Jerusalem consulate for Palestinian affairs

US officials have reached out to Palestinians to reassure them that the fulfillment of President Joe Biden’s election pledge to reopen the Jerusalem consulate for Palestinian affairs has not been scrapped.

The efforts of the US State Department officials come as a delegation headed by Deputy Assistant Secretary for Israeli and Palestinian Affairs Hady Amr spent some time with senior Palestinian officials on Thursday. Hussein al-Sheikh, the senior Palestinian official charged with relations with Washington published successive tweets in English and Arabic with photos of the meeting.

“We talked about the challenges that the #Palestinians face due to the occupation and the historical injustice that we face as a result of the lack of implementation of international legitimacy and of double standards,” one tweet said.

But it was not clear how the issue of the US consulate in Jerusalem was addressed during these meetings. A US State Department official told The Media Line that the US is still committed to the issue of reopening the consulate. 

“We remain committed to reopening our consulate in Jerusalem. We continue to believe it is an important way for our country to engage with and provide support to the Palestinian people,” the official said.

Sheikh clearly was not won over. “I have my doubts whether the consulate will open. I am concerned that these are all maneuvers,” he told The Media Line after the meeting.

We remain committed to reopening our consulate in Jerusalem. We continue to believe it is an important way for our country to engage with and provide support to the Palestinian people.

The US reassurances notwithstanding, Palestinian officials speaking on condition of anonymity also are pessimistic about the consulate ever returning to the pre-Trump period. Part of the pessimism appears to be due to the fact that the US has, in fact, made some positive changes in the operations, mandate and even the name of the diplomatic mission in Jerusalem.

The British daily The Guardian said that changes have been made already, noting that the American mission in Jerusalem has been redesignated and will report directly to Washington “on substantive matters.” The Guardian reported that “what had been called the Palestinian Affairs Unit (PAU) was renamed the US Office of Palestinian Affairs (OPA) under the move. Before becoming the PAU, it had been the US consulate in Jerusalem and a focus of Palestinian statehood goals in the city.”

The name of the mission also was changed to US Office of Palestinian Affairs on its official Twitter page.

While the changes in the mandate of the Jerusalem mission appear to bring it operationally back to the pre-Trump era, many Palestinians see in the move an attempt to find some common ground between the president’s commitments during the election campaign and the strong Israeli rejection of any movement away from the changes that the Trump administration had enacted in 2019 with the encouragement of then-US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Wadie Abu Nassar, a Haifa-based political analyst, told The Media Line that it is difficult for the US to choose a correct path regarding the issue of its consulate in Jerusalem. “I believe the US is trying to find a compromise between ‘independent’ consulate and a ‘dependent’ mission on the embassy to Israel,” said Nassar, who serves as spokesman for the Catholic Bishops of the Holy Land and honorary consul of Spain in northern Israel.

Amr appears to have received a mandate to take a much more public stand on some of the more sensitive issues involving the Palestinians. He made a surprise visit on Friday to Patriarch Theophilus III at the Orthodox Patriarchate in Jerusalem at a time when the Palestinians are furious that Israel’s high court refused to allow the reopening of the case of a real-estate deal made between the right-wing Ateret Cohanim organization and a member of the Church.

Amr also was seen visiting the Tent of the Nations organization, a Palestinian Christian NGO that has been facing problems with Jewish settlers trying to take over their farm. He also participated in a high-level meeting between Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs Barbara Leaf and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday to discuss the US-Palestinian relationship, US assistance to the Palestinians, the deepening of ties between the US and the Palestinians, and how Palestinians and Israelis alike deserve equal measures of freedom, security and prosperity.

While the changes in the internal communications between Palestinian diplomats and Washington will be welcomed in Ramallah, it is not clear whether it is too little too late. Palestinian officials have a laundry list of demands that they are hoping the US will take a more serious look at, in addition to the consulate issue. They are still awaiting a change of the status of the PLO and the removal of its name from the list of organizations that support terror as the State Department recently did for Sudan so that the Palestinian mission in Washington can reopen, another Biden campaign promise.

Palestinians want to find a way to overcome the current Israeli coalition government’s refusal to negotiate an end to the military occupation. Axios reported that the Bennett government had already rejected a request from Washington on this issue, but Palestinians feel that the US is saying the right words yet moving very carefully and slowly in translating words into actions or in holding Israelis accountable.

The issue of killed American-Palestinian journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, for example, is one in which the US has repeatedly demanded an investigation but then did little when the Israeli army announced it would not open a criminal investigation into the case, though the IDF did hold a preliminary investigation into whether its soldiers were culpable. It appears to most in the Arab world, however, that the Israeli side has not conducted a thorough enough investigation. Meanwhile, a few weeks later another female Palestinian, identified as a journalist on her first day of work, was shot dead by Israel soldiers near Hebron; the IDF said that she approached the soldiers brandishing a knife.

What is sure is that the US is not interested or willing to seriously challenge the Israelis on Palestinian-related issues. It is also not clear whether things are moving in the direction of a more vocal and stronger US diplomatic presence on the ground that would lead in a later stage in the carrying out of Biden’s election promises. On the other hand, many are worried that Washington is simply trying to pacify an angry Palestinian leader who has threatened to end security coordination with Israel.

 

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