Using Iran Animus to Lean on Palestine

The Anti-Iran Axis Tries to 'Blackmail' Palestine 

by TRNN

November 21, 2017

The Trump administration's threat to close the PLO mission in Washington, DC is part of a wider US-Israel-Saudi effort to assert regional dominance, says Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies 

The Trump administration is threatening to close the Palestine Authority's mission in Washington DC. The reason the White House says, is that the Palestine Authority, President Mahmoud Abbas recently called on the International Criminal Court to investigate Israel for war crimes. A 2015 law says Palestine efforts to hold Israel to account at the ICC could lead to punitive action. The US now says the mission could close unless Palestinians back down. But the Palestinian leadership says they will not be blackmailed. This move coincides with Israel and Saudi Arabia speaking openly of cooperation. And there's reason to believe that that could be a factor here.

Phyllis Bennis is a Fellow and the Director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington D.C. She is the author of Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer, Before and After: US Foreign Policy and the September 11 Crisis, Ending the US War in Afghanistan: A Primer and Understanding the US-Iran Crisis: A Primer. Her most recent book is Understanding ISIS and the New Global War on Terror: A Primer.