The Trump administration said the freestanding consulate was no longer needed after the embassy moved to Jerusalem. But numerous U.S. diplomats and Palestinian officials have decried the closure as a slap in the face to the Palestinian Authority.
The diplomat struggled to find words to describe the situation of American envoys who arrived in Jerusalem with the aim of building ties to the Palestinian Authority, which officially cut ties to the United States after Trump’s announcement of the embassy’s move. Palestinians said the move did not take into account Palestinian aspirations for East Jerusalem to serve as the capital of a future state of Palestine.
The U.S. is not abandoning the consulate building, across from Independence Park in West Jerusalem. It said it would become home to a new Palestinian affairs unit. The consulate had been one of very few non-embassy diplomatic posts reporting directly to the State Department. For many of the diplomats serving there, the work — support and training for Palestinian security services and major joint economic and social initiatives — came with a deep vocation for peace-building.
Nirit Shalev Khalifa, a historian and author of a scholarly catalog about the history of American consuls in Jerusalem, said the closure represents “the end of an incredible period in the development of Jerusalem and its place in international life. The Agron Street location has been the face of the United States here since 1912, and it represented American goodwill.
Walles, who retired from the State Department in 2017, described Trump’s move to subsume the consulate general into the embassy as “a complete break with United States policy.” A former U.S. ambassador to Israel, Ned Walker, has been an outspoken advocate of moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, but strongly objected to the consulate closing.
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