Several news outlets reported on Saturday that Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki, to quote the Associated Press, “said that the Palestinian Authority is ready to cooperate with U.S. President-elect Joe Biden, on the basis of achieving a Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital on territory Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war.”

Most of those who read this news will be unlikely to notice that, just as “literally” can now mean “figuratively,” the statement, in fact, means the opposite of what it purports to convey. This is because, though it appears to call for an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, it contains within it a poison pill that effectively precludes any such agreement — the demand for eastern Jerusalem to serve as the Palestinian capital.