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The Trump Administration's decision to shut down the Palestine Liberation Organization's Washington office angered the Palestinians and added new tensions to the framework agreement that guided US policy in the Middle East. a quarter century.
The decision to close the office of the PLO is the latest in a series of measures taken by the administration that seem to be moving away from the 1993-95 Oslo accords before the administration explained what she should do according to her.
The Oslo Accords, the first of which was signed 25 years ago, define the conditions for relations between Israel and the Palestinians, including the creation of an interim government for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
The State Department, which announced the closure, insisted that the United States had not abandoned its efforts to achieve lasting and comprehensive peace, spokeswoman Heather Nauert said. enter into negotiations with Israel and "refused to engage with the US government in peace and other efforts."
US officials have spoken little of the substance of their promised plan for an "Arab-Israeli Century Agreement," unless they are looking for the right time to present it. But former negotiators have said the administration is undermining a long-standing framework for resolving the conflict.
"They are dismantling traditional American architecture to create a two-state solution," said Wilson Center Aaron David Miller, who has worked for more than two decades in Arab-Israeli negotiations at the State Department under various presidential administrations.
Mr Miller said that on the three fundamental issues – the status of Jerusalem, the territorial dimensions of a Palestinian state and how to deal with Palestinian refugees – political U. S. is being realigned.
The PLO office is Washington's representative for the organization. This closure is the result of other actions of the I & # 39; administration that angered the group, including moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and distributing funds to the US. UN agency to help Palestinian refugees and reduce US aid to hospitals in Palestinian areas of East Jerusalem.
Palestinian officials have complained that the United States is trying to impose its vision of a settlement in the Middle East and is not interested in genuine mutual concessions.
"We do not think it's just a matter of intimidation … we think this is the implementation of Israel's grocery list," said Husam Zomlot, the Palestinian representative in Washington, in an interview on Monday. He said relations between Palestinians and Washington "are at a historic level."
Meanwhile, relations between Washington and the Israeli government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have reached a climax. Some Trump administration officials and members of Netanyahu's government strongly criticize the Oslo Accords.
The historic agreement was a direct pact between the Israeli government and the PLO and was signed in Washington, with a famous handshake between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO President Yasser Arafat. The agreements left decisions on the borders of Jerusalem and other thorny issues for further negotiations.
Trump administration officials said the paradigm created by the agreements failed to bring peace and complained that Palestinian officials are not open to a new approach.
Dennis Ross, who has worked as a senior official on Middle East issues for Republican and Democratic administrations, said that "if the administration has an interest in reaching out to the Palestinians before presenting its peace plan, do a lot of work. more difficult. "
For all the problems, Mr Ross said that these measures might not mean the end of the Oslo negotiating framework because Israel would be reluctant to assume responsibility for meeting the economic, health and educational needs in the West Bank. the Palestinian Authority.
Jason Greenblatt, President Trump's special representative for negotiations in the Middle East, who works with his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, said both parties would like and would not like the elements of the administration's forthcoming plan.
The announcement of the closure of the office of the PLO took place two weeks before Mr. Trump presided over the US Security Council.
The White House National Security Advisor, John Bolton, on Monday described the closure of the PLO office as part of a broader effort to repel the International Criminal Court and its efforts to investigate Israel. The ICC is also planning a survey of US Army personnel and the Central Intelligence Agency that served in Afghanistan.
Having appeared before the Federalist Society, a conservative group, Mr. Bolton alleged that the court was biased against the United States and posed a danger to US sovereignty. He has threatened to respond to any effort to investigate the Americans by banning Dutch-based judges from entering the United States, sanctioning Court funds, and restricting military and foreign assistance to countries that cooperate with her.
David Scheffer, the first US ambassador for war crimes committed under the Clinton regime, strongly criticized Bolton's speech. The speech "isolates the United States from international criminal justice and seriously compromises our leadership by bringing the perpetrators of atrocity crimes to justice elsewhere in the world," he said.
The ICC recently said that it had jurisdiction to investigate Myanmar officials for violence against the Rohingya Muslim minority. She also sued people in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and the Darfur region of Sudan.
The decision to close the PLO office has been applauded by conservative lawmakers and pro-Israel groups who have been supporting such an initiative for several years.
"So far, the presidents of both parties have let the PLO hold an office in Washington, which has signaled to Palestinian leaders that violence and intransigence had no cost and hindered thus the cause of peace, "said Senator Ted Cruz. , Texas).
Write to Michael R. Gordon at [email protected] and Felicia Schwartz at [email protected]
