Palestinian officials expressed outrage after the State Department website removed a page on the Palestinian territories from its list of countries and regions, following a series of pro-Israel actions by the administration of President Donald Trump, while Gaza is on high alert after three policemen were killed in two explosions.
The ministry's official website no longer has a separate entrance to the Palestinian Authority. A copy of the archive from the website of former President Barack Obama (2009-2017) shows that the Palestinian Territories were on the list of countries and regions on the opening page and in the Near East Office section.
Asked about the issue, a State Department official downplayed the change on the State Department Web site. "The site is under updating and there has been no change in our policy," she said, but she did not say whether the site, which had recently been redesigned, would again include a separate entrance to the Palestinian territories.
Palestinian officials have questioned whether the change, which came after the term "occupied territories" was removed from some US documents, and the hopes of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to annex a large part of the West Bank, will not be deliberate.
After a meeting chaired by Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh last Monday, the Palestinian government confirmed that the move "confirms US bias towards Israel," and said that this shift "can not ignore Palestinian rights, which was recognized unanimously by the countries of the world." The official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.
Saeb Erekat, secretary of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) executive committee, said delisting the Palestinian territories "is not about the national interests of the United States, it is about advancing the agenda of the Israeli settlers' council." .
Dan Shapiro, the US ambassador to Israel under Obama, called the change on the ministry's website "crazy."
He wrote on Twitter: "The Palestinians will not go anywhere else. American interests require dealing with them, and Israel itself is still cooperating with the Palestinian Authority in different ways."
The State Department, on the other hand, changed some of the statements in its reports and no longer speaks of "occupied territory."
The Palestinian Authority announced months ago that it no longer considered the United States an honest broker in the peace process, rejected Trump's peace initiatives and boycotted a conference in Bahrain in June that sought to develop Palestinian territory.
This comes at a time when the Gaza Strip was in a "state of alert", following two explosions that killed three policemen in the Gaza Strip, according to Palestinian officials in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
Authorities in Gaza did not specify the nature of the blasts, while the Israeli army, which bombed a Hamas site, the day before yesterday after the launch of a rocket from the Gaza Strip, said that he did not launch any raid the night before last night.
Palestinian witnesses told AFP that there were no planes flying over the area at the time of the blasts. Other witnesses said one of the blasts was carried out by a suicide bomber, but no official source confirmed the information.
A statement from the Hamas Health Ministry said that two policemen were killed in "two explosions that targeted two police checkpoints" in Gaza City late last night.
And yesterday morning, the Interior Ministry of Hamas, the death toll rose to three policemen.