WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump’s administration said Tuesday that the United States would end a separate office for Palestinian affairs in Jerusalem, a largely symbolic step that supports the Israeli position.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio “has decided to merge the responsibilities of the Office of the Palestinian Affairs office fully into other sections of the United States embassy,” State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce told reporters.
Trump in his first term moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a major win for Israel which considers the contested holy city its eternal capital.
In doing so, Trump closed a historic consulate in Jerusalem that had served US diplomatic outreach to the Palestinians.
Rubio’s predecessor Antony Blinken sought to reopen the consulate, while maintaining the embassy in Jerusalem, but Israel resisted the move.
The United States instead set up the separate Office for Palestinian Affairs which was still inside the embassy but reported separately to Washington.
The closing of the separate office comes as Israel wages an offensive in Gaza in response to the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government fiercely opposing moves toward a Palestinian state.
Bruce played down a wider significance to Tuesday’s announcement on the Palestinian office, saying it reverted to policy under Trump’s first term.
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.
She said it was part of a streamlining of the State Department in Washington, ensuring that offices on “the issues that are important are all working together.”
US ends separate Palestinian affairs office in Jerusalem
https://arab.news/j3e6s
US ends separate Palestinian affairs office in Jerusalem
- The closing of the separate office comes as Israel resumed a military offensive in the Gaza Strip
- Trump in his first term moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem
More than 9,000 flights canceled as major winter storm bears down across much of US
- “Dangerously cold temperatures and wind chills are spreading into the area and will remain in place into Monday,” the agency said on X
DALLAS: More than 9,000 flights across the US set to take off over the weekend have been canceled as a major storm expected to wreak havoc across much of the country threatens to knock out power for days and snarl major roadways.
Roughly 140 million people were under a winter storm warning from New Mexico to New England.
The National Weather Service forecast warns of widespread heavy snow and a band of catastrophic ice stretching from east Texas to North Carolina.
Forecasters say damage, especially in areas pounded by ice, could rival that of a hurricane.
Ice and sleet that hit northern Texas overnight were moving toward the central part of the state on Saturday, the National Weather Service in Fort Worth said.
“Dangerously cold temperatures and wind chills are spreading into the area and will remain in place into Monday,” the agency said on X.
Low temperatures will be mostly in the single digits for the next few nights, with wind chills as low as minus 24 Celsius.
About 68,000 power outages were reported across the country at 8 a.m. ET, about 27,600 of them in Texas. Snow and sleet continued to fall in Oklahoma.
After sweeping through the South, the storm was expected to move into the Northeast, dumping about a foot of snow from Washington through New York and Boston, the weather service predicted.
Temperatures reached minus 34 C just before dawn in rural Lewis County and other parts of upstate New York after days of heavy snow.
Governors in more than a dozen states sounded the alarm about the turbulent weather ahead, declaring emergencies or urging people to stay home.
