Israeli officials oppose US consulate in Jerusalem for Palestinians
Occupied Palestine (QNN)- Israeli occupation Justice Minister Gideon Sa’ar said on Tuesday that he opposes a US consulate being opened in Jerusalem that will exclusively serve Palestinians.
In a conversation with Editor-in-Chief Yaakov Katz at the Jerusalem Post Conference on Tuesday, Sa’ar said that he strongly opposes the opening of a US consulate that handled relations with Palestinians in occupied Jerusalem, adding that Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is on the same page.
Bennett has expressed his opposition to the opening of the US Consulate in Jerusalem several times, as he proposed to US President Joe 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.
In May, the Biden administration announced that the U.S. would be reopening the Consulate General in Jerusalem that handled relations with 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.
