U.S. to Downgrade Palestinian Affairs Office in Jerusalem, Officials Say

[Pelican Press 0]

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U.S. to Downgrade ************ Affairs Office in Jerusalem, Officials Say

In recent years, an office within the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem had a direct line of communication with Washington. That was meant to signal that the United States saw ************ issues as important, and considered the Israeli-occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip to be separate from Israel.

Now, the new U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, has decided to shut down this direct channel, according to U.S. officials who spoke condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations. The decision will effectively end the special status of the Office of ************ Affairs at the embassy, which had been sending cables to Washington without being required to get them approved first by embassy leaders.

The cables went to U.S. agencies working on foreign policy and national security. The office, which is in the old Jerusalem consulate building and not in the embassy, is responsible for maintaining contact with senior ************ officials and reporting on ************ issues.

The move is one of Mr. Huckabee’s most significant decisions since arriving in Israel in April.

Lourdes Lamela, the acting head of the Office of ************ Affairs, was recently informed of the ambassador’s decision after Mr. Huckabee consulted with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the officials said.

After the State Department was asked for comment for this article on Tuesday morning, the department spokesperson, Tammy Bruce, said at an afternoon news conference that Mr. Rubio had decided “to merge the responsibilities” of the ************ Affairs office “fully” into the embassy. She added that Mr. Huckabee would oversee the merger in the coming weeks.

For decades, under Republican and Democratic presidents, the State Department maintained an embassy in Tel Aviv because the United States did not formally recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. But the department also operated an American consulate in Jerusalem, where the U.S. government has had a diplomatic mission since the Ottoman era.

The first Trump administration recognized Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and moved the U.S. embassy there. It shut down consulate operations in Jerusalem. The work on ************ issues was then subsumed into the new embassy, and the division was renamed the ************ Affairs Unit, though it stayed in the old building.

The United States has long advocated for the establishment of a ************ state alongside Israel.

While the Biden administration did not re-establish the consulate, it changed the name of the ************ Affairs Unit to the

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in 2022 and restored its unique mechanism for reporting directly to Washington.

The head of the office had the authority to approve cables written by the staff and send them along to the United States, without getting clearance from the top embassy officials who had to approve other cable traffic. Diplomats who worked in that office took care to calibrate the language and topics they included in cables because they did not want senior officials to revoke the power to use that direct channel.

“While we used the separate authority to report on key issues, we had to be careful how we phrased it to avoid losing our independence,” said Mike Casey, a diplomat who worked on Gaza issues in the ************ Affairs office from 2021 until he resigned last year.

The political sensitivity of cable traffic between Jerusalem and Washington surged after the Israel-Gaza war began in October 2023. Mr. Casey said that top embassy officials told most diplomats there to stop writing cables except for short daily updates, but the ************ Affairs office retained its special authority, and the handful of diplomats there continued to write and send cables.

Recently, Mr. Huckabee has also told embassy staff that he would like to meet with senior ************ officials in Ramallah, the administrative headquarters of the ************ Authority. This is a responsibility usually handled by the head of the Office of ************ Affairs, the officials said. The U.S. ambassador in Israel traditionally does not meet with ************ leaders in Ramallah, reinforcing that the United States views the ************ Authority distinctly from Israel.

In a text message, Hussein al-Sheikh, a senior ************ official, said he would not comment until the Ramallah-based ************ leadership learns officially about the details of the decision.

Hady Amr, who served as the U.S. special representative for ************ affairs under the Biden administration, said that shutting down the direct line between the Office of ************ Affairs and Washington would undermine the ability of diplomats to offer “direct and unvarnished” reporting.

“Closing this channel will further diminish the credibility and thus the ability of U.S. diplomats to engage the ************ people just at the time we need it most,” he said.

Mahmoud Abbas, president of the ************ Authority, has largely avoided confrontation with the current Trump administration over its policies and statements on the Israeli-************ conflict, in contrast to his more combative approach during Mr. Trump’s first administration. At the time, he boycotted U.S. officials.

Mr. Abbas was furious with Mr. Trump for relocating the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, cutting off aid to Palestinians, and closing the official ************ representative office in Washington.

Last week, Mr. Huckabee hinted that he would close the direct reporting channel between the Office of ************ Affairs and the U.S. State Department.

“Certainly there needs to be a unity and a unified command when it comes to how things run at the embassy,” Mr. Huckabee

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at a Jewish News Syndicate conference.

Some former officials at the embassy said Mr. Huckabee’s decision suggested the United States could support Israeli annexation of the West Bank, territory that the Palestinians hope will be part of a future ************ state.

“It’s a small step that’s indicative of increasingly alarming trends in U.S. policy toward Palestinians, including the possibility of supporting Israeli annexation of the West Bank,” said Ibrahim Dalalsha, a former high-level staff member at the consulate in Jerusalem.

In 2017, before Mr. Huckabee became ambassador, he

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to the West Bank and he took issue with the terms “West Bank” and “settlement.”

“There is no such thing as a West Bank,” Mr. Huckabee said. “There’s no such thing as a settlement — they are communities, they’re neighborhoods, they’re cities. There’s no such thing as an occupation,” he added.

Last week, he

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, that annexation was not a decision for the United States, but he suggested that it would eventually take place.

Still, Mr. Huckabee told members of the U.S. Senate in March that his policies would not be implemented in the Middle East, but rather those of Mr. Trump. In February, Mr. Trump told a news conference with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel that the United States was discussing Israeli annexation of the West Bank with representatives of the Israeli government. At the time, he said “people do like the idea” but clarified the administration had not taken a position on it yet.

Mr. Trump added that an announcement on annexation would probably be coming within the following four weeks, but no announcement was made.

Michael Crowley contributed reporting.

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