The Trump administration is wrong to close the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s Washington, D.C. office. The de facto embassy for Palestinian interests in America, the PLO office affords an olive branch to Palestinian aspirations.
The State Department says the closure is necessary for two reasons:
First, as a response to the PLO’s idiotic cooperation with the International Criminal Court to harass Israel.
Second, because the PLO has “refused to engage with the U.S. government with respect to peace efforts and otherwise.”
While it’s true that the ICC is a pathologically anti-Israel and anti-American organization that works in shared cause with similar organizations, it’s also largely irrelevant. Closing the PLO office does not functionally damage the ICC. More importantly, however, this office closure does nothing to advance peace. As I noted following the short term PLO office closure enforced last November, these actions only empower fanatics such as Hamas.
In fact, the symbolic weight of so blatantly ending Palestinian representation in America – aside from at the United Nations – makes it far harder for rising Fatah leaders (Fatah is the foundational political party inside the PLO) to compromise with the U.S. in the future. Doing so in face of this perceived rebuke to Palestinian nationalism would open Fatah leaders to criticisms of being sellouts.
This bears special consideration alongside President Mahmoud Abbas’ declining health and diminishing credibility. Put simply, does America want Abbas’ successor to be a practical realist who can work with the U.S. and Israel? Or do we want a hardliner who works ever-closer with Hamas? Or do we want a corrupt fool like Yasser Arafat who works with everyone and no one?
Ultimately, this decision reeks of petulance. President Trump has already given up on pressuring Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to compromise with the Palestinians, and Trump’s staff know their upcoming peace plan is almost certainly dead on arrival in Jerusalem and Ramallah. Perhaps then, Trump officials believe that punishing the PLO in this way will allow them to save face. And perhaps they are right. But this action does nothing to advance U.S. interests or the cause of peace.
The hardliners are the only beneficiaries here.
