The Office of Palestinian Affairs, a Joe Biden creation, urged Israel not to respond to Hamas’s October 7 attack
Secretary of State Marco Rubio will dissolve the State Department’s Office of Palestinian Affairs (OPA), a Biden-era creation that elevated relations with the Palestinian Authority, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.
Rubio directed newly installed U.S. ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee to merge the independent diplomatic office and its responsibilities, including outreach to the Palestinians, with the American embassy in Jerusalem, U.S. officials and congressional sources briefed on the matter confirmed to the Free Beacon. The decision is meant to restore the Trump administration’s first-term vision for a unified U.S. diplomatic mission in Israel’s capital that reports directly to the ambassador.
The office repeatedly earned the ire of Republican lawmakers for its anti-Israel advocacy during the Biden-Harris administration. In the early hours of Hamas’s October 7 attack, the OPA called on Israel to stand down and forgo any retaliation. Subsequent legislation sought to rein in the office, mandating it periodically report on its public diplomacy and advocacy efforts.
The Biden administration created the OPA in June 2022 against Israel’s wishes, endowing it with the power to operate independently of the American embassy. It has come under fire in the past for its potential violation of the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, which mandated that a single U.S. embassy be established in the Israeli capital.
As a senator, Rubio helped lead the charge against the Palestinian affairs office and the Biden administration’s efforts to ramp up diplomacy with the Palestinian government in the years prior to Hamas’s October 7 attack.
He and a coalition of more than 80 lawmakers raised concerns that the diplomatic outpost was meant to erode President Donald Trump’s decision in his first term to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s undivided capital and move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv.
By opening the Office of Palestinian Affairs, the Biden-Harris administration signaled that Jerusalem could again be divided under a future peace deal between the Palestinians and Israel.
“Let there be no misunderstanding: this unprecedented arrangement—to turn the Palestinian Affairs Unit into a ‘U.S. Office of Palestinian Affairs’ that will no longer report to the U.S. Ambassador to Israel but instead report directly to the State Department in Washington, D.C., and to appoint a Special Envoy to the Palestinians—is an effort to open an unofficial and de facto U.S. consulate to the Palestinians in Jerusalem,” Rubio and his colleagues wrote June 2022 letter to the Biden administration.
Rubio will eliminate the position of Special Envoy to the Palestinians alongside the OPA.
Senator Bill Hagerty (R., Tenn.), who partnered with Rubio in the 2022 push to shutter OPA, described the move as key to enforcing Trump’s vision of a unified Jerusalem.
“I welcome Secretary Rubio’s efforts in the second Trump administration to reinforce President Trump’s historic first-term decision to fully implement the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 and relocate the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Israel’s eternal and indivisible capital of Jerusalem,” Hagerty told the Free Beacon. “During the Biden years, I was proud to defeat the Biden administration’s inflammatory plan to reverse President Trump’s decision and their effort to undermine the sovereignty of our ally Israel by turning the U.S. Embassy’s Office of Palestinian Affairs into a second U.S. mission in Jerusalem.”
Huckabee will implement Rubio’s order in the coming weeks, according to those briefed on the matter.
The OPA is one of many diplomatic outposts being shuttered or restructured as part of a massive overhaul meant to ensure the State Department aligns with Trump’s foreign policy aims.
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