Trump Regime Closes Jerusalem Consulate Serving Palestinians
by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org – Home – Stephen Lendman)
The Trump regime’s one-sided support for Israel is deplorably hard-edged.
Earlier this year, it cut off most US funding for Palestinians. All funding through UNRWA for its refugee population ended, a flagrant assault on their rights and welfare.
In September, the State Department closed the PLO office in Washington after operating for 24 years.
At the time, John Bolton said closure was because “Palestinians refusing to take steps to start direct and meaningful negotiations with Israel” – a bald-faced lie.
It’s because Palestinians haven’t unconditionally surrendered to unacceptable US and Israeli demands. The move severed formal US diplomatic relations with Palestinians.
Trump regime hardliners want Palestinians severely punished for refusing to abandon their fundamental rights.
The latest blow came Thursday. Pompeo announced what he called the merger of Washington’s Jerusalem embassy with its consulate in the city, downgrading the status of Palestinians more than already.
He lied calling the move a way “to achieve significant efficiencies and increase our effectiveness.”
He lied claiming the merged facilities don’t “signal a change of US policy on Jerusalem, the West Bank, or the Gaza Strip.”
He lied saying the Trump regime “is strongly committed to achieving a lasting and comprehensive peace that offers a brighter future to Israel and the Palestinians.”
Washington and the Jewish state deplore peace and stability, why endless regional wars rage, why Palestinians are terrorized by apartheid rule, why suffocating Gaza blockade continues.
Merging the two diplomatic facilities has nothing to do with either greater efficiency or pursuing Israeli/Palestinian conflict resolution.
It has everything to do with unacceptable Trump regime toughness against Palestinians, contempt for their fundamental rights.
Israeli deputy diplomacy minister/former envoy to the US Michael Oren, notorious for supporting apartheid viciousness, shamefully called the move a great day for Israel, Jerusalem, and the US.
PLO secretary general Saeb Erekat responded to the action as follows, saying:
“The decision of the United States to end the consulate’s existence…has nothing to do with efficiency, but a lot with the desire to please the ideological American team, which is primed to dismantle the foundations of the international system and US foreign policy in order to reward Israel for its violations and crimes,” adding:
The Trump regime “is making clear that it is working together with the Israeli government to impose Greater Israel with no Palestinian sovereignty.”
Palestinian MK Ahmad Tibi called the move “a negative development,” aiming to undermine Palestinian sovereign rights, killing any chance for a two-state solution the US and Israel long ago rejected.
Up to now, the US Jerusalem consulate served as a de facto Palestinian embassy. Merging it with the US embassy closes its mission. It recognizes exclusive (illegal) Israeli control over the city, hardening occupation harshness more than already.
Separately on Tuesday, Trump’s Zionist ideologue envoy to Israel David Friedman broke longstanding precedent by visiting an illegal West Bank settlement, showing overt support for what demands condemnation.
It was also more evidence of Trump’s contempt for resolving the longstanding Israeli/Palestinian conflict equitably – supporting Jewish state lawlessness, dismissive of Palestinian rights.
Before becoming US envoy, Friedman headed an extremist fundraising group involved in raising tens of millions of dollars for one of the most radicalized West Bank settlements.
His appointment by Trump signaled one-sided regime support for Israel, Palestinian interests to be ignored.
My newest book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
