That terrorist organizations should not have an official presence in the United States is a point with which most Americans would agree. Yet the office of the Palestine Liberation Organization has operated for years from an impressive office on Wisconsin Avenue in Washington D.C., with the blessing of the U.S. government.
On Monday, the Trump administration ordered it closed.
State Department spokesman Heather Nauert explained the mission’s shuttering by noting “the PLO has not taken steps to advance the start of direct and meaningful negotiations with Israel.” The organization’s leadership, she continued, “has condemned a U.S. peace plan they have not yet seen and refused to engage with the U.S. government with respect to peace efforts and otherwise.”
Congress had the right idea in 1987 when, referring to the PLO as a terror group, it prohibited the office’s existence. Successive administrations took advantage of congressional waivers that green-lighted the office beginning in 1993, initially for the purpose of facilitating the peace process. But the PLO has intermittently repudiated the whole idea of peace with Israel. Again and again the organization has either quietly abetted or openly called for the rewarding of acts of terror. Its leaders have advanced and sponsored a wide variety of U.N. efforts to demonize the state of Israel. And the group has called for an International Criminal Court investigation against the Jewish state—efforts that it is reportedly planning to intensify in the wake of the office closure.
Monday’s closure order is no surprise. It comes after years of congressional pressure led by Texas senator Ted Cruz and Florida congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. Congress passed legislation in 2015 that adjusted the certifications the president must issue in order to keep the PLO office open. As the two lawmakers noted in June, Palestinian calls for ICC action against Israel made it impossible to issue that certification—and the administration declined to issue it in November 2017. Even without it, however, the administration could have kept the office open by stating that the Palestinians are engaged in “direct and meaningful negotiations with Israel.” But they are not.
The 1987 law prohibiting a PLO office in the U.S. described the organization and its affiliates as “a threat to the interests of the United States, its allies, and to international law.” In the years since, the group has been granted a U.S. office, admission to a key U.N. agency, and membership in the ICC. Monday’s closure begins the reversal of that regrettable trend.
Contrary to conventional wisdom in diplomatic circles, the closure may make peace more likely rather than less. The PLO mission’s termination follows the American Embassy’s move to Jerusalem and the administration’s decision to cut funding for the terror-aligned U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine. With the PLO’s representative now effectively barred from official Washington (Ambassador Husam Zomlot was recalled to Ramallah in May), Palestinian leaders may conclude it’s time to try something new: good faith negotiations with Israel and the United States.
