RAMALLAH (Dispatches) – Palestine on Sunday decried the Zionist regime’s refusal to reopen a U.S. consulate to serve Palestinians in occupied East Al-Quds.
On Saturday, Zionist prime minister Naftali Bennett said there is no place for an American consulate to serve Palestinians in Al-Quds.
Bennett’s statement is a “critical test for the U.S. administration of Joe Biden,” the Palestinian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
The ministry called on the U.S. administration to stick to its stance on reopening the U.S. Consulate in Al-Quds for the Palestinians.
“It is high time for the international community to take the lead in respecting its obligations and assume its legal and moral responsibilities towards the [Zionist] occupation and settlements, and to stop its miserable trust in the Israeli regime,” the ministry said.
The spokesman of Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas also said, “We will only accept a U.S. consulate in Al-Quds, the capital of the Palestinian state. That was what the U.S. administration had announced and had committed itself to doing,” Nabil Abu Rudeineh told Reuters.
In 2019, former U.S. President Donald Trump closed the U.S. Consulate in East Al-Quds and merged it with the U.S. Embassy after moving it to Al-Quds from Tel Aviv.
Al-Quds remains at the heart of the Zionist-Palestine conflict, with Palestinians hoping East Al-Quds, now occupied by the Zionist regime, will eventually serve as capital of a future Palestinian state.
East al-Quds was occupied by the Zionist regime in 1967 and effectively annexed three years later.
The occupying regime lays claim to the entire Al-Quds, but the international community views the city’s eastern sector as occupied territory.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 478, adopted on August 20, 1980, prohibits countries from establishing diplomatic missions in Al-Quds.