The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) President Morton A. Klein and ZOA Director of Government Relations Dan Pollak released the following:
The Zionist Organization of America strongly endorses the Bill introduced today by Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) and 34 Republican co-sponsors to prohibit any funding for a U.S. Consulate in Israel’s capital city of Jerusalem serving the Palestinian Arab terrorist regime, which pays Arabs to murder Jews and refuses to recognize the Jewish state. Establishing the consulate would be a major step towards changing the existing U.S. policy that Jerusalem is the undivided capital of the Jewish state, and would result in an unearned reward for intransigence to the terrorist Palestinian Authority (PA) regime. The "Upholding the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Law Act of 2021" makes the point that existing law explicitly prohibits the opening of any other U.S. diplomatic post in Jerusalem, and denies funding for the proposed consulate.
ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said:
"A U.S. ‘Palestinian Arab’ consulate in Jerusalem is a discriminatory, diplomatic insult and an attack on Israel’s sovereignty. It is an attack on Israel’s rights to the Jewish people’s eternal holiest city, Jerusalem. The United States has no consulate serving another entity or group in any other country with which the U.S. maintains diplomatic relations.
"Such a consulate would also boost dangerous efforts to divide and claim Jerusalem for a Palestinian Arab terror state’s capital.
"Establishing a consulate would also reward the terrorist dictatorship of the Palestinian Authority for continuing to pay Arab terrorists huge rewards to murder Jews and Americans, for inciting hatred and murder against Jews and Christians, and for filing illegitimate, false claims against Israel in international bodies―all in violation of the PA’s signed Oslo agreements. The consulate would appease terrorism.
"The Oslo accords also prohibit the PA from carrying on foreign relations―and establishing this consulate would enable the PA to also violate this agreement."
Recent remarks by Secretary of State Anthony Blinken have implied that the U.S. might move forward with the establishment of a consulate even though Israel objects. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Israeli Minister of Justice Gideon Sa’ar, and Minister of Foreign Affairs Yair Lapid have explicitly opposed the idea. In fact, the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (1963) requires the explicit permission of the host country to open a consulate. See this Op-Ed by Morton Klein encouraging Israel to resist this pressure from the U.S. administration.
