Thread by @JacobMagid

🧵How Trump's Jerusalem policy handcuffed Biden on his Mideast trip and behind the scenes on the Abbas-Biden meet (1/16)
timesofisrael.com/how-israel-nea…

Biden and Abbas’s offices initially sought to have the two leaders issue a joint statement following their meeting that would highlight the areas of US-Palestinian agreement regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the administration official said. (2/16)

Washington drafted a version that was sent to Ramallah for approval. The PA returned the statement with edits that went much further than what the Biden administration was willing to go. In a last-ditch effort to reach a compromise, the White House asked Abbas’s office... (3/16)

... what its red line was for the statement and Ramallah responded that it would have to include recognition of East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state. The admin official explained that the US would not be able to make such a declaration bc it... (4/16)

...would violate the proclamation signed by former president Donald Trump, which recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital while maintaining that the specific boundaries of Israeli sovereignty would be “subject to final status negotiations between the parties.” (5/16)

Upon realizing that the US would not be able to move on the issue, Abbas’s office suggested that the two presidents simply issue separate statements at the conclusion of their meeting. (6/16)

In the closed-door meeting, Biden was “honest about what he would be able to do,” the senior admin official told @TimesofIsrael, w/o going as far as to explicitly say that the president told Abbas that reopening the consulate would not be possible due to Israeli opposition.(7/16)

To discuss the issue of the PLO office in DC, reps from the newly minted Office of Palestinian Affairs were called on to explain what the PA would have to do in order to allow for its reopening. Abbas was told US law would require him to drop his efforts against Israel...
(8/16)

...at the ICC along w/ ceasing efforts to join UN agencies & to become a UN member state -- a particularly hard pill for Ramallah to swallow, given that Abbas asked Biden during the meeting for his support with the latter effort, the administration official acknowledged. (9/16)

If they were to pledge to roll back those initiatives, the US would consider signing a waiver that would allow for the temporary reopening of the PLO office, the US official said, adding that the waiver process could be scrapped entirely if Ramallah followed through (10/16)

Abbas was told during the meeting that scrapping the 1987 law would require the PA to reform its welfare policy, which includes payments to security prisoners who carried out attacks against Israelis along w/ the families of slain attackers, per a 2nd senior US official. (11/16)

That official said they "found the overall mood in Bethlehem to be fairly constructive, compared to where things stood a month ago." Then Abbas had met with a Barbara Leaf & threatened to cut security ties w/ Israel over latter's actions in East Jerusalem & the West Bank. (12/16)

The senior US official indicated that Abbas had since stepped back from that position as a result of the president's visit and the series of steps aimed at improving the economy and livelihood for Palestinians under Israeli control. (13/16)

Those steps included the announcement of 4G cell phone access for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, expanding the hours at the Allenby Bridge crossing between the West Bank and Jordan to 24/7, and the reconvening of the Israeli-Pal Joint Economic Committee. (14/16)

But these are measures that have been announced before by Israel and then never implemented. The first senior US official recognized that the Biden administration will have to follow up with Jerusalem on these steps to ensure that they are seen through this time. (15/16)

The official added that the White House is planning to look into what it can do to advance contacts between Lapid and Abbas moving forward. The two leaders spoke days before Biden's visit in what was the first such call between Israeli and Palestinian leaders in five years.END.