State Dep’t Rejects Call to Close DC Office of the PLO – ‘An Important Partner’
(CNSNews.com) – The State Department pushed back Tuesday on calls by Republican lawmakers for the administration to shut down the Palestine Liberation Organization’s office in Washington, saying it opposes the move because “we believe the PLO is an important partner in advancing the two-state solution.”
“We believe closing the PLO office would be detrimental to our ongoing efforts to calm current tensions between Israelis and Palestinians, advance a two-state solution, and strengthen the U.S.-Palestinian partnership,” said spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau.
She said the department had received a letter from lawmakers, and that Secretary of State John Kerry “will engage.”
Trudeau noted the PLO’s status as “the official representative body of the Palestinian people before the international community.”
“We believe that the PLO has a valid place,” she said, adding that the administration would “oppose those efforts” to shut down the office.
In a letter [1] to Kerry, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) and 30 other Republican lawmakers called on his department to revoke a waiver that has enabled the PLO to maintain an office in Washington for the past 21 years, accusing the organization and its leaders of inciting a spate of violence against Israelis over recent months.
“The spike in violence in Israel is directly connected to the Palestinian government’s teaching of hate and glorification of terrorism,” they wrote.
“The United States government has an obligation to publicly denounce the PLO’s actions and should immediately revoke its waiver,” the letter stated. “Allowing the PLO to maintain an office in Washington, D.C. provides no benefit to the United States or the peace process.”
The letter also cited reports by the Israel-based group Palestinian Media Watch to the effect that the PLO is “rewarding and incentivizing terror attacks” by paying “salaries” to Palestinians imprisoned in Israel.
“Each year, the PLO provides about $150 million to terrorists imprisoned in Israel and families of deceased terrorists.”
Cruz in a statement focused attention on statements by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, who last week described the wave of knife and gun attacks as a “justified popular uprising [2].” Cruz recalled that Abbas also said last September, “We welcome every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem [3].”
“It is long past time for the United States to hold the PLO and its leaders accountable for engaging in such rampant incitement, for celebrating the murder of Jews, and for providing payment to Palestinian terrorists jailed in Israel and their families,” he said.
The PLO office in D.C. did not respond Tuesday to an invitation to respond to the lawmakers’ initiative.
Trudeau of the State Department said the administration remains “deeply concerned about ongoing violence in Israel, Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza.”
“We completely reject the notion that there is any justification for violence against innocent civilians,” she said. “We continue to stress the importance of – to Palestinian leadership of strongly opposing violence in all forms.”
Despite a long history of involvement in terrorism, the PLO was recognized by the U.N. General Assembly as the official representative of the Palestinian people in 1974.
U.S. legislation dating back to 1987 bars the PLO from maintaining an office in the U.S. but includes waiver authority.
Since 1994, Republican and Democratic administrations have invoked the waiver to allow the PLO to have the office in Washington. In mid-2010 the Obama administration allowed the office to begin flying the Palestinian flag there and to change its official name to PLO Delegation to the United States.
The PLO was established by Yasser Arafat in 1964 with the goal of establishing a Palestinian state to replace Israel. (The fact it was formed three years before Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and other territory during the Six Day War, underlines that the aim was to conquer Israel itself, not just areas that would later become known as the “occupied territories.”)
After Arafat’s death in 2004 the PLO was headed by Mahmoud Abbas for a decade until he announced last August his intention to resign. The PLO’s legislative body, the Palestinian National Council (PNC), was due to meet the following month to elect Abbas’ successor but the session – which would have been the first in six years – was postponed. It is now due to take place “within the coming three months, [4]” a PLO official said recently.
Abbas is also the chairman of the Palestinian Authority (P.A.), the self-rule administration set up under the Oslo Accords. That mandate formally expired in January 2009, although his tenure has been “extended” by decree ever since.
Early this week Abbas announced that within a year, the P.A. will start issuing “State of Palestine” passports.
“We have already changed all documents issued by ministries and public services and they now bear the name ‘State of Palestine,’” he told reporters in Greece. “We no longer accept from anybody to use the name ‘Palestinian Authority.’”
The State Department said it was looking into the passport matter, but pointed out that the U.S. does not recognize the “state of Palestine.”
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