The Democratic candidate for the US presidential elections, Joe Biden, pledged Wednesday to keep his country's embassy in Israel in its new location in occupied Jerusalem, if he is elected President of the United States, and at the same time reopen the American consulate in East Jerusalem and make efforts to keep the two-state solution viable.

The former vice president expressed his regret for the step taken by President Donald Trump to move the embassy from Tel Aviv, and said that the embassy "should not have been removed from its place" before reaching a peace agreement in the Middle East.

"As it happened, I will not return the embassy to Tel Aviv," Biden said during a fundraising event held over the Internet.

But former Vice President Barack Obama said in his speech, "But what I will do is I will also reopen our consulate in East Jerusalem for dialogue with the Palestinians, and my administration will urge both sides to take initiatives to keep the prospects for a two-state solution alive."

Bias to Israel,
and since his coming to power in early 2017, Trump has taken a series of decisions that strongly favored Israel and angered the Palestinians who severed ties with his administration after its recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel on December 6 of the same year, and then transferred the US embassy from Tel Aviv To Jerusalem in May 2018.

And last November, the US administration dealt a new blow to the international consensus on the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians by declaring that the United States no longer considered the Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank illegal, contrary to what international law prescribes.

In late January, Trump's son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner unveiled the US president's Middle East peace plan, which requires Palestinians to make very large concessions to Israel. 

Trump's plan has been rejected by the Palestinians, supported by most of the international community, as it closes the door to a two-state solution in the Middle East.