New US envoy hails Biden for ‘elevating’ Palestinian issue, vows to pressure Israel on Palestinian consulate

Hady Amr also vowed to work on the Biden administration to pressure Israel into allowing the U.S. to reopen its consulate in eastern Jerusalem.

By World Israel News Staff

The U.S.’ freshly appointed special envoy to the Palestinians, Hady Amr, on Wednesday hailed the Biden administration for creating the position, which he said “elevates” the Palestinian cause and underlines the administration’s commitment to Palestinian statehood.

The creation of the role, under the title “U.S. Special Representative for Palestinian Affairs,” was “unprecedented,” Amr told reporters, and “bolsters our ability to manage challenges in the Israeli-Palestinian relationship.”

It “elevates the Palestinian issue and our engagement on it,” he went on.

“This move is completely consistent with the Biden administration’s commitment to strengthen US engagement with the Palestinian people and leadership that we’ve launched into since day one and even before taking office,” he said.

“The administration supports two states along the ’67 lines where mutually agreed swaps remain the best way to achieve equal measures, security, prosperity, freedom, democracy and justice for Palestinians as well as Israelis,” Amr said.

As envoy, Amr vowed to work on the Biden administration to pressure Israel into allowing the U.S. to reopen its consulate in eastern Jerusalem, a de facto embassy to the Palestinians that the Trump administration shuttered in 2018.

“We continue to believe that reopening the consulate would put the US in the best position to engage with and provide support to the Palestinian people. We will continue to discuss this issue with our Israeli and Palestinian partners,” he said.

President Joe Biden “stated that the Palestinian people deserve a state of their own that’s independent, sovereign, viable and contiguous, in addition to deserving to live along with Israelis safely and securely while enjoying equal measures of freedom, prosperity and democracy,” Amr said.

Amr praised Biden for restoring aid to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, which Trump defunded for being “irredeemably flawed.”

Noting that the U.S. restored its place as the world’s largest donor to UNRWA, Amr said: “We’ve given about $680 million to UNRWA over the last 18 months and we are going to stay committed to supporting that organization.”

Amr has in the past decried Israeli policies and blasted Israel over its alleged mistreatment of the Palestinians.

In an unhinged 2002 rant, Amr repeated Palestinian jihad propaganda, declaring: “I have news for every Israeli: a very large proportion of the more than 150 million children and youth in the Arab World now have televisions, and they will never, never forget what the Israeli people, the Israeli military and Israeli democracy have done to Palestinian children.”