TEL AVIV: The Palestinians on Sunday slammed Israel for rejecting the promised reopening of the US Consulate in Jerusalem, a move that would restore Washington’s main diplomatic mission for the Palestinians in the contested city.
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said late Saturday there was no room in Jerusalem for another American mission.
The Trump administration shuttered the US Jerusalem Consulate, an office that for years served as the de facto embassy to the Palestinians. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has pledged to reopen it, a move that Israel says would challenge its sovereignty over the city. The reopening could help mend US ties with the Palestinians ruptured under Trump.
In a statement, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry said it views the reopening of the consulate as part of the international community’s commitments to ending Israel’s decades-long occupation of territories the Palestinians seek for their future state.
“East Jerusalem is an inseparable part of the occupied Palestinian territory and is the capital of the state of Palestine. Israel, as the occupying power, does not have the right to veto the US administration’s decision,” the statement said.
Asked about the consulate at a press conference, Bennett repeated Israel’s position on Jerusalem.
“There’s no room for another American consulate in Jerusalem,” he said. “Jerusalem is the capital of one state and that’s the state of Israel.” Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid suggested the consulate could instead be opened in the Palestinian administrative center in Ramallah, West Bank. The Palestinians reject the idea because it would undermine their claims to Jerusalem.
Israel views Jerusalem as its eternal, undivided capital. The Palestinians seek the eastern part of the city, which Israel occupied in 1967 and later annexed, as capital of their hoped-for state.
The consulate is emerging as another test between Bennett’s government and the Biden administration, which has moved to restore traditional US foreign policy toward Israel and the Palestinians after the Trump White House largely sided with Israel on issues related to the conflict.
Trump had downgraded the consulate’s operations and placed them under his ambassador to Israel when he moved the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to the holy city in 2018. The embassy move infuriated the Palestinians and led them to sever most ties with the Trump administration.
Blinken has not provided a firm date for the reopening and US officials have implied that Israeli resistance to the move could act as a hindrance.
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Palestinians, Israel spar over US mission in Jerusalem
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Palestinians, Israel spar over US mission in Jerusalem
Landmine explosion in Sudan kills 9, including 3 children
KHARTOUM: A land mine explosion killed nine people in Sudan on Sunday, including three children, as they were riding in an auto-rickshaw along a road in the frontline region of Kordofan, a medical source told AFP.
The war between the regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which began in April 2023, has left Sudan strewn with mines and unexploded ordnance, though the explosive that caused Sunday’s deaths could also have dated back to previous rebellions that have shaken South Kordofan state since 2011.
“Nine people, three of them children, were killed by a mine explosion while they were in a tuk-tuk,” a medical source at Al-Abbasiya hospital said.
The vehicle was reduced to “a metal carcass,” witness Abdelbagi Issa told AFP by phone.
“We were walking behind the tuk-tuk along the road to the market when we heard the sound of an explosion,” he said. “People fell to the ground and the tuk-tuk was destroyed.”
Kordofan has become the center of fighting in the nearly three-year war ever since the RSF forced the army out of its last foothold in the neighboring Darfur region late last year.
Since it broke out, Sudan’s civil war has killed tens of thousands of people and forced 11 million to flee their homes, triggering a dire humanitarian crisis.
It has also effectively split the country in two, with the army holding the north, center and east while the RSF and its allies control the west and parts of the south.
The war between the regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which began in April 2023, has left Sudan strewn with mines and unexploded ordnance, though the explosive that caused Sunday’s deaths could also have dated back to previous rebellions that have shaken South Kordofan state since 2011.
“Nine people, three of them children, were killed by a mine explosion while they were in a tuk-tuk,” a medical source at Al-Abbasiya hospital said.
The vehicle was reduced to “a metal carcass,” witness Abdelbagi Issa told AFP by phone.
“We were walking behind the tuk-tuk along the road to the market when we heard the sound of an explosion,” he said. “People fell to the ground and the tuk-tuk was destroyed.”
Kordofan has become the center of fighting in the nearly three-year war ever since the RSF forced the army out of its last foothold in the neighboring Darfur region late last year.
Since it broke out, Sudan’s civil war has killed tens of thousands of people and forced 11 million to flee their homes, triggering a dire humanitarian crisis.
It has also effectively split the country in two, with the army holding the north, center and east while the RSF and its allies control the west and parts of the south.
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