Secretary of State Marco Rubio will disband the State Department’s Office of Palestinian Affairs (OPA), established during the Biden administration to enhance diplomatic ties with the Palestinian Authority.
As a senator, Rubio was a leading critic of the OPA and the Biden administration’s push to deepen diplomatic ties with the Palestinian Authority in the years leading up to Hamas’s October 7 attack.
Rubio has instructed newly appointed US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee to consolidate the independent OPA and its functions, including outreach to the “Palestinians,” into the US Embassy in Jerusalem. This move is designed to restore the Trump administration’s vision of a unified US diplomatic mission in Israel’s capital, with all reporting directly to a single ambassador.
“This had been established in Trump’s first term,” State Dept. Spokesperson Tammy Bruce told reporters on Tuesday. “It’s not a new idea. It, in fact, restores his first-term framework of a unified US diplomatic mission in Israel’s capital that reports to the ambassador to Israel. So, this is something that was reversed by the previous administration that had already been established. Ambassador Huckabee, of course, is in charge and will be taking steps to do this.”
Bruce emphasized that the move did not signal a reduced commitment to engagement with the people of the liberated territories. Rather, she described it as part of a broader effort to streamline diplomatic operations, similar to internal reorganization efforts within other bureaus, by integrating related functions under one cohesive structure.
The goal, she said, was to ensure that key priorities, including foreign aid and diplomatic outreach, were coordinated more effectively within the embassy. The restructuring reflects a return to the unified framework established during President Trump’s first term and aligns with President Rubio’s vision for US diplomacy in the region.
All of which was a polite way of saying, we kicked out the Arabists.
The Biden administration established the OPA in June 2022 over objections from the Bennett government, granting it authority to operate independently from the Embassy in Jerusalem. Critics argued this setup violated the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, which requires the US to maintain a single diplomatic mission in Israel’s capital.
By opening the OPA, the Biden-Harris administration signaled a possible shift in US policy, suggesting that Jerusalem could once again be considered subject to division in a future peace agreement between Israel and the “Palestinians.”
The OPA faced sustained criticism from Republican lawmakers, who accused it of promoting anti-Israel positions throughout the Biden-Harris administration. The office drew particular outrage for urging Israeli restraint in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s October 7 atrocities. In response, Congress introduced legislation to curtail the OPA’s reach, requiring regular reports on its public diplomacy and advocacy activities.
