This month’s prize for dangerous moves and disingenuous Press releases goes to the State Department for its Thursday notice, headlined “On the Merging of US Embassy Jerusalem and US Consulate General Jerusalem.” It was a statement by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announcing that the US Consulate in East Jerusalem was being closed and its functions were being transferred to the US Embassy in Jerusalem – that was the dangerous part. The disingenuous part was his claim that this move had no political meaning since it was merely a cost-saving measure.
Here is the beginning of the release:
“I am pleased to announce that following the May 14 opening of the US Embassy in Jerusalem, we plan to achieve significant efficiencies and increase our effectiveness by merging US Embassy Jerusalem and US Consulate General Jerusalem into a single diplomatic mission. I have asked our Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, to guide the merger.
“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 US Embassy Jerusalem. That unit will operate from our Agron Road site in Jerusalem.
“It does not signal a change of US policy on Jerusalem, the West Bank, or the Gaza Strip. As the President proclaimed in December of last year, the United States continues to take no position on final status issues, including boundaries or borders.”
There is so much that is wrong and misleading with this announcement that I scarcely know where to begin in critiquing it. But let me start with the claim that this is just an effort to “improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our operations.”
Surely the secretary must know that the Jerusalem Consulate is not just another consular office. As for the “functions” described in the statement, missing is the historic role that the Consul General played as the official point of contact between the Palestinians in the occupied territories and the US government. The US Embassy in Tel Aviv dealt with Israel and Israeli affairs, while the consulate served as the “de facto embassy to the Palestinians.” Even in difficult times, the US Consul General and the consulate remained open to receiving Palestinians and hearing their concerns. Now Palestinians are left with the US Embassy in Israel as the sole American address in their region.
Visiting the Embassy in West Jerusalem will be even more problematic. This guarantees that ordinary Palestinians will no longer have contact with official US representatives.
It is also not believable for the secretary to claim that this move “does not signify a change of US policy on Jerusalem...(or) the specific boundaries of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem.” For decades, the US claimed that by maintaining a consulate in East Jerusalem, the US was sending the message that it continued to recognise that portion of the city was occupied territory. It’s important to note that Ambassador Friedman has been shaping US policy on this issue ever since he assumed his post. He has ordered that the Palestinian territories no longer be referred to as “occupied” and recent State Department publications reflect this.
It is also disingenuous for the Secretary to claim that the US “takes no position on...borders” because, as a result of US sins of commission and omission, they have allowed Israel to determine the shape of the map of Jerusalem and the rest of the occupied territories.
For years, supporters of a two-state solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict have been warning that we are “five minutes before midnight.” Recent actions by the Trump administration have firmly moved us well past midnight. Maybe, to be perfectly honest, the sign the US places over its Jerusalem Embassy should read “Welcome to the One State Solution” – because that’s what we now have. And, by the way, it’s an apartheid state and the US has aided and abetted its creation.