American officials: US shelved opening Jerusalem consulate for Palestinians

Occupied Palestine (QNN)- The United States has shelved its effort to reopen the de facto Consulate in Jerusalem to the Palestinians shuttered by former president Donald Trump in 2019, American officials told The Times of Israel.

A US diplomat, a former senior US official and another source familiar with the matter told The Times of Israel this week that the Biden administration “has effectively shelved its effort to resurrect the de facto mission to the Palestinians.”

The three sources confirmed that no such process has begun although It’s been seven months since US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced the decision of reopening the Consulate.

Moreover, even the administration’s more ardent advocates of reopening the consulate have shifted their focus to policies more likely to impact day-to-day life for Palestinians, the former senior US official said.

The apparent about-face follows significant pushback from ‘Israel’, which would have to sign off on the move. And as ‘Israel’ is already gearing up for a fight with the Biden administration over the latter’s insistence on exhausting the diplomatic route in Vienna to revive the Iran nuclear deal, the US is not looking to open up a second front by moving forward with the consulate reopening at the moment, the source familiar with the matter told The Times of Israel.

Blinken announced in October that Washington will be moving forward with its plan of reopening its consulate which served Palestinians in Jerusalem.

“We’ll be moving forward with the process of opening a consulate as part of deepening those ties with the Palestinians,” Blinken stated at the State Department as speaking to the press after hosting a trilateral meeting with Israeli occupation Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and Emirati Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed al-Nahyan.

Last May, the Biden administration announced that the U.S. would be reopening the Consulate General in Jerusalem that handled relations with the Palestinians.

US President Joe Biden said he would keep the US embassy in Jerusalem “to engage the Palestinians.”

The consulate dates back to 1844 and served for 25 years as the U.S. diplomatic mission to the Palestinians.

However, in 2018, outgoing President Donald Trump merged the consulate into the US embassy in Jerusalem, after he moved the US embassy to ‘Israel’ from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem after his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December 2017.

Several Israeli officials opposed the US plan, including Israeli PM Bennett, Israeli occupation Justice Minister Gideon Sa’ar and Former Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu.

It was reported that Bennett proposed to Biden that the American Consulate reopened on the outskirts of Ramallah or in the occupied West Bank town of Abu Dis, but the United States has said it is not interested in the plan.