A Slap in Abbas’ Face as US Eliminates Eastern Jerusalem Consulate for PA Residents

By David Israel, JEWISH PRESS

The State Dept. is planning to merge its long-serving consulate in eastern Jerusalem with the newly created US embassy in the western part of the Israeli capital, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced on Thursday. This step is viewed as yet another slap in the face of the Palestinian Authority and its chairman, Mahmoud Abbas, since the consulate has been serving Arabs from Judea and Samaria and from the eastern part of the city for decades.

The announcement also does away, for all intents and purposes, with the idea that President Trump was planning to turn the consulate into a US embassy in a new Palestinian State whose capital would be eastern Jerusalem.

“This decision is driven by our global efforts to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our operations,” Pompeo said. “It does not signal a change of US policy on Jerusalem, the West Bank, or the Gaza Strip.”

“We will continue to conduct a full range of reporting, outreach, and programming in the West Bank and Gaza as well as with Palestinians in Jerusalem through a new Palestinian Affairs Unit inside U.S. Embassy Jerusalem,” the Secretary insisted. “The administration is strongly committed to achieving a lasting and comprehensive peace that offers a brighter future to Israel and the Palestinians. We look forward to continued partnership and dialogue with the Palestinian people and, we hope in the future, with the Palestinian leadership.”

Meanwhile, Israel’s Channel 2 News reported Thursday night that President Trump had sent a personal envoy on his behalf to Chairman Abbas on Tuesday this week. The envoy is a familiar face: Ronald Lauder, the heir to the Estée Lauder Companies and the president of the World Jewish Congress.

Lauder, who is no longer on good terms with his former friend Benjamin Netanyahu, was sent behind the backs of Trump’s other peace envoys, Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt. He also met with Saeb Erekat, head of the PA peace negotiations team, and Majed Fares, head of PA intelligence and Abbas’s close confidant.

Erekat, meanwhile, slammed the US merge decision in a press release that declared: “The Trump Administration is making clear that it is working together with the Israeli Government to impose Greater Israel rather than the two-state solution on the 1967 border.”

“The US administration has fully endorsed the Israeli narrative, including on Jerusalem, Refugees and Settlements,” Erekat said.

October 19, 2018 | 5 Comments »

Leave a Reply

5 Comments / 5 Comments

  1. Walid Sadi’s article may be referenced at http://www.jordantimes.com/opinion/walid-m-sadi/jordans-role-over-holy-sites-east-jerusalem-legal%C2%A0and-sovereignty-related. David Singer points out that there is censorship in Jordan, and that this article could not possibly have been published without the approval of King Abdullah’s government. Also, Sadi served in Jordan’s diplomatic corps for 35 years, which makes him an unofficial government spokesman. Obviously, then, King Abdullah would like to revive the “Joranian Option” now that Trump appears to be dumping the PA-“State of Palestine.” This may provide Israel with an opportunity to work out a ‘two state solution” with Jordan being the second state. It would be worthwhile for Israel to follow up on this possibility, at any rate.

  2. Jordan’s role over holy sites in East Jerusalem legal and sovereignty-related
    Jordan’s custodianship over the Islamic and Christian holy sites in East Jerusalem is resting on several pillars, including the 1994 Jordanian-Israeli Wadi Araba Peace Treaty. Not enough has been made to rest on legal and sovereignty grounds, and I venture to explain this grave omission.

    While the peace treaty with Israel stipulated in Article 9 that Israel will respect the “present special role” of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan on Muslim holy shrines in Jerusalem and that it, meaning Israel, will give high priority to the Jordanian historic role on these shrines when negotiations on the permanent status will take place, it failed to state two fundamental points: namely the inclusion of the Christian holy places and reference to Jordan’s sovereign rights in East Jerusalem.

    Jordanian representatives at the negotiating table then have erred, and erred grievously, by not extending the scope of this article to the Christian sites as well. They have blundered even more gravely when they omitted reference to the legal and sovereignty rights of Jordan when addressing Jordan’s special role over the holy places in East Jerusalem.

    I rest my case on UN Security Council Resolution 242, adopted on November 22, 1967 in the aftermath of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. That resolution stipulates in no uncertain terms the withdrawal of Israel from the occupied Arab territories. There was no doubt, either before the adoption of that resolution or after, that all the parties were referring to Jordanian territorial rights in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, when speaking of Israeli withdrawals. There were differences then that ensued about whether the resolution called for Israel’s withdrawal from “all “or just “from the” occupied territories, but for the purposes of this article this controversy does not amount to much.

    US secretary of state at the time Henry Kissinger stated unequivocally that Jordan’s acceptance of Resolution 242 is contingent on Israel’s withdrawal from occupied Jordanian territories, including East Jerusalem. Kissinger said at the time that the Jordanian acceptance of Resolution 242 was conditioned on the return of the West Bank of Jordan to Jordan, with minor boundary rectifications. Kissinger also confirmed that Jordan’s recognition of the resolution was made conditional on the respect of Jordan’s status quo role in East Jerusalem.

    As for the counter argument that Jordan had surrendered or forfeited these rights when it decided to cut off “all legal and administrative” relations with the West Bank, as a jurist, I have to say the following by way of rebuttal. First of all, the unity of the West Bank with the East Bank was officially and constitutionally adopted on 24 of April 1950. No one disputes this fact. The Constitution of the country at the time was the 1952 Constitution, which stipulated in no uncertain terms that no part of the Kingdom shall be ceded, period. This provision makes the 1988 decision to cut off all legal and administrative relations between the two banks stopping short of ceding the West Bank to any side whatsoever. Any other interpretation of the 1988 political decision is absolutely untenable constitutionally.

    On the strength of the foregoing, Jordan’s role over the holy sites in East Jerusalem is not only historic or religious, but legal and sovereignty-related in every sense of the word.

    This is an article published in the Jordan Times, a publication indirectly owned by the Jordanian government. It is written by Walid M.Sadi, a Jordanian retired diplomat and regular columnist for the JT, and was published on August 12 of this year. It may indicate that King Abdullah wants to revive the “Jordanian Option” after all, as David M. Singer points out in Arutz Sheva.

  3. Today. Abaarse slapped back, nutunayahoo accepts that khan.al ahmar is occupied land. He’s more more concerned about having to fight another court battle.
    WILL this surrender loose him personally the next election

  5. guess erekat needs to learn his ABC as the word border is not in 242 nor any suggestion of land for peas with his terror sluts