Secretary of State Marco Rubio is shuttering the State Department’s Office of Palestinian Affairs, which was opened under the Biden administration as an alternative to the United States Embassy in Jerusalem.
The office worked directly with the Palestinian Authority and Palestinians in Gaza and Judea and Samaria, also known as the West Bank.
“Secretary Rubio has decided to merge the responsibilities of the Office of Palestinian Affairs office fully into other sections of the United States Embassy in Jerusalem,” State Department Press Secretary Tammy Bruce said on Tuesday during a press briefing. “This decision will restore the first Trump term framework of a unified U.S. diplomatic mission in Israel’s capital that reports to the U.S. Ambassador to Israel.”
After Trump opened the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem in 2018, the U.S. Consulate General in Jerusalem — which had handled…
