Biden’s plan to open separate Jerusalem consulate for Palestinians violates US law

BY CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS

SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2021/05/bidens-plan-to-open-separate-jerusalem-consulate-for-palestinians-violates-us-law;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

The White House lived up to its promise to send Secretary of State Antony Blinken to the Middle East to “rebuild ties” with Palestinians. In fact, it exceeded expectations, with a pledge by Biden to ask Congress to donate $75,000,000 to the Palestinians. It didn’t stop there. Blinken formally announced the decision to reopen the Palestinian consulate in Jerusalem during a meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah. But to do so isn’t legal according to the article below, which was written by Mark Meadows, chief of staff to former President Donald Trump, and David Milstein, who served as special assistant to the US ambassador to Israel.

A Palestinian consulate in Jerusalem violates the Jeruslem Embassy Act that Trump activated in 2017. The Act recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel and calls for Jerusalem to remain an undivided city.

Although Biden stated that Israel has a right to defend itself, his administration has bent over backwards to send the message to Palestinians that America under Biden supports the Palestinian cause —

which is jihad for the eradication of Israel.

“Biden’s plan for a diplomatic mission to the Palestinians blatantly violates US law,” by Mark Meadows and David Milstein, New York Post, May 26, 2021:

As presidential candidate, Joe Biden was asked if he would reverse President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and the relocation of the US Embassy to Jerusalem. Biden promised, “I wouldn’t reverse it.”

But candidate Biden also proposed re-opening the US diplomatic mission to the Palestinians in Jerusalem, which had merged with the Jerusalem embassy in 2019.

Now Team Biden is moving forward with the latter initiative. On May 25, Secretary of State Antony Blinken formally told Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that Washington would seek to reopen this diplomatic mission. The move contradicts Biden’s campaign promise not to renege on the recognition of Jerusalem, since a pair of missions in the same city undercuts Jerusalem’s status as Israel’s capital. It also breaks the Jerusalem Embassy Act that sought to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem no later than 1999 — a law Biden voted for along with 92 other senators.

The 1995 law states that “Jerusalem should remain an undivided city, in which the rights of every ethnic and religious group are protected. … Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of the State of Israel.” In 2017, on the 50th anniversary of Jerusalem’s reunification in the Six Day War, the Senate unanimously voted to reaffirm the act and called upon the US to “abide by its provisions.”

Former President Donald Trump fulfilled the will of the American people, as expressed by Congress, by relocating the embassy in 2018. In February 2021, the Senate also adopted an amendment by a 97-3 vote to “make the US Embassy in Jerusalem permanent, effectively preventing it from being downgraded or moved out of Israel’s capital, Jerusalem.”

The Biden administration’s intent to reopen a separate diplomatic mission to the Palestinians in Jerusalem, Israel’s capital and the location of the US Embassy, would be a violation of US law, wrongly signaling that Washington supports dividing Jerusalem.

If implemented, this could signal the return to a misguided diplomatic arrangement, under which the US ambassador to Israel historically lacked jurisdiction over the eastern part of Jerusalem, the West Bank or Gaza. Instead, a US consul general led a separate diplomatic mission to the Palestinians, who had jurisdiction over those geographic areas. The consulate general didn’t even report to the US ambassador to Israel, but directly to the State Department, often sending conflicting reports to DC.

The diplomatic mission included the US consulate general’s official residence, located in the western part of Jerusalem, thus resulting in the US having a diplomatic mission to the Palestinians in Jerusalem, despite that the fact that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital.

The Trump administration’s decision to merge the US diplomatic mission to the Palestinians into the US Embassy in Jerusalem remedied the prior arrangement and implemented a key aspect of the Jerusalem Embassy Act, which requires that the US Embassy in Jerusalem include the ambassador’s official residence.

Reopening this separate diplomatic mission to the Palestinians would therefore render the US government noncompliant with American law…..