Article published by the Gatestone Institute, 27 October 2021. © Richard Kemp
Only a few months ago, US President Joe Biden betrayed a US ally by withdrawing forces from Afghanistan, bringing down the government in Kabul and consigning the country to the bitter depredations of Taliban terrorists. Now he is winding up to betray another, much closer ally — Israel.
Biden plans to open a consulate in Jerusalem. This may seem like just another diplomatic facility to issue visas, promote trade and take care of US citizens, with no greater consequence than the US consulate in Edinburgh, UK. But it is far more than a mere office for paper-shuffling diplomats. It amounts to a de facto US embassy to the Palestinians on Israeli territory. Its true purpose is to undermine Israeli sovereignty in its own capital city and will jeopardise future prospects for peace between Israel and Palestinian Arabs.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) Prime Minister, Mohammad Shtayyeh, understands the implications only too well. In a recent interview, he triumphantly predicted that the new consulate would re-divide Jerusalem.
After the US moved its embassy from Tel Aviv to Israel’s capital in 2018, it subsumed the existing consulate in the city to form a single diplomatic mission. This was achieved under the administration of President Donald J. Trump and that, together with a profound misunderstanding of the dynamics of peace, explains Biden’s determination to re-open the consulate. He has devoted much of his presidency so far to undoing everything he could of Trump’s work, with the exception of the Afghanistan debacle, over which he uniquely claims to have been bound by Trump’s previous plans.
The new consulate, exclusively to manage diplomatic relations with Palestinians, is designed to give hope that one day Jerusalem will be the capital of a putative Palestinian state. Israel can and rightly Continue reading