The US is “merging” its Office of Palestinian Affairs with its embassy to Israel, the State Department said on Tuesday, in a step that signals a much-anticipated downgrade in US relations with the Palestinians.
State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had decided to end the Office of Palestinian Affairs, known as OPA, in its independent status and make it an office within the embassy.
The decision is “not a reflection on any outreach, or commitment to outreach, to the people of the West Bank or to Gaza”, Bruce said.
Rumours about the OPA’s abolition by the Trump administration have been swirling among diplomats for months.
The Trump administration is already moving to eliminate the position of US security coordinator for the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
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The US security coordinator’s office is a little-known post, but it is the most public centrepiece of the US’s defence engagement with the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) security services.
Absorbing the OPA into the US embassy to Israel signals a further downgrade in the US’s recognition of the Palestinian Authority and the Trump administration’s limited interest in the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
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US diplomats working in the OPA enjoyed a degree of separation from the US’s diplomatic mission to Israel. They could send cables or diplomatic reports back to Washington and other US embassies without the approval of senior US diplomats overseeing Israeli affairs.
The distinction will now go away, and senior diplomats assigned to cover Israel will now oversee relations related to the Palestinian Authority and Palestinian issues.
The office already lacked a senior leader.
Hans Wechsel, who headed the OPA, resigned from his post in March. The Trump administration did not fill his position. Career foreign service officer Lourdes Lamela was the most senior official at the office.
For decades, the US maintained its embassy to Israel in Tel Aviv and operated a consulate in Jerusalem that oversaw Palestinian Affairs. That distinction stemmed from the US’s refusal to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
Israel conquered East Jerusalem in the 1967 War and annexed it. The First Trump administration recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, in a blow to the Palestinians, and moved the US embassy there. It also shut down the consulate, although diplomats continued to work out of the 19th-century era stone building.
Trump’s newly arrived ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, was a vocal proponent of Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank before his appointment, and said that “there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian”.
