The Palestinians’ Unrealistic Demands for Joe Biden

The Palestinians presented “five demands” to Joe Biden when he met with Mahmoud Abbas in mid-July. A report on those demands, written before the meeting, is here.

Among those demands are these:

2. Reopening the US Consulate in Jerusalem.

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“Biden promised to reopen the consulate and we are waiting for him to fulfill his promise,” Deek told the Post. The consulate, which served as a de facto American diplomatic mission to the Palestinians, was closed by the Trump administration in 2018. The Palestinians consider the reopening of the consulate as a US recognition of east Jerusalem as the capital of the future Palestinian state. They are also hoping that the reopening of the consulate would effectively cancel Trump’s 2017 recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

That “consulate to the Palestinians” in Jerusalem will never be reopened. Joe Biden apparently was unaware, when he made his promise during the presidential campaign to reopen the consulate, that he lacked the power to do so without Israeli approval. The Vienna Convention on Consular Rights (1963), Article 4, makes clear that for a consulate to be opened or reopened, the consent of the “receiving Party” must be granted. In this case the “receiving Party” is Israel, and the statements of Yair Lapid, Naftali Bennett, and Benjamin Netanyahu have made crystal clear that any such request made to Israel, to allow that consulate to be reopened, will be turned down. It’s too bad that Biden had not better informed himself early on, or that Tony Blinken had not looked into the relevant international law; now they look even more maladroit than usual.

3. Removing the PLO from the list of terrorism and reopening the organization’s diplomatic mission in Washington.

The Palestinians don’t understand what the problem is with that group of splendid fellows who make up the PLO. Here’s what that problem is: the PLO, as Americans know, began in 1964; it was the first Palestinian terrorist group, and for many years the deadliest, long before Hamas, PFLP, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad appeared on the scene. As a consequence of its long history of terrorist attacks, the PLO was put on the list of designated terrorist organizations by the American government in 1987. The PLO has never been removed from that list, though a Presidential waiver in 1988 permitted American contact with the organization until 2018, when the Trump Administration closed the PLO office in Washington. .

There is little chance that the Biden Administration will now fulfill its earlier feckless promise to reopen the PLO office. Such a move would infuriate most members of Congress, who can point out that the PLO has never renounced terrorism. There is no benefit to the Administration in reopening the PLO office, but rather, a great cost, should it choose to ignore the wishes of Congress. Why would the Bidenites want to make it more difficult for the President and Congress to work harmoniously together on foreign policy, just to satisfy Mahmoud Abbas and other PLO loyalists?

4. Exerting US pressure on the Israeli government to halt the “escalation” against the Palestinians.

“This means translating the US positions, such as rejection of settlements and seeking calm and confidence-building measures, into practical measures whereby the Israeli government would be forced to halt the escalation,” said Deek. “It’s time for the US to move from rhetoric and nice and positive statements towards putting pressure on Israel to end its policies and measures.

“The Israelis are carrying out gradual annexation of parts of the West Bank, especially in the areas of the Jordan Valley and Hebron,” he said. “On the ground, they are doing whatever they want. Israel wants to annex Area C, which they see as constituting strategic depth for the settlements.

The U.S. has a lot less ability to “put pressure” on Israel than the Palestinians may think. And with every passing year, Israel goes from strength to strength, and becomes ever less susceptible to outside pressure. Besides, Washington has little desire to pressure Israel. Biden, for all his faults, when it comes to Israel he is not deeply antipathetic, like Obama. Blinken is similarly maladroit in statecraft, but he is not viscerally anti-Israel like James Baker. Israel is America’s partner, and its most valuable ally. Israel’s military is now largely self-sufficient, and has developed weapons, such as the Iron Dome and Iron Beam anti-missile systems, that even the Americans did not have. Israel is also energy self-sufficient, thanks to the Tamar and Leviathan(and now Karish) natural gas fields. Just a few years ago, the Jewish state was deeply dependent on energy imports, but now it exports natural gas to Egypt, Jordan, and soon, to Europe. Israel is the strongest military power in the Middle East, and is keenly appreciated by the Sunni Arabs, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE, for its ability to deal with Iran’s support of Hezbollah, with weapons delivered through Syria, and even more, for its ability to slow down Iran’s progress toward manufacturing a nuclear weapon.

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