The Trump administration will no longer refer to Arab residents of Jerusalem as Palestinians, Israel Hayom has learned.
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In a new human rights report released on Wednesday, the US for the first time calls the Arab residents of the capital "non-Israeli residents who live in Jerusalem."
The annual State Department report evaluates the state of human rights across the world. It has a chapter dealing with the situation in Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem. In recent years its terminology has changed regarding those areas.
Two years ago, the report decided to omit the term "occupied" in reference to Judea and Samaria, and last year the report included strong rebukes of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas over their violation of human rights rather than just over Israel's record.
The administration's latest decision is in keeping with its principled stance of sticking to the truth and facts on the ground. The administration told Israel Hayom that the new definition of Arab residents in east Jerusalem reflects the reality in the capital,: On the one hand the Arab residents are not Israeli citizens but on the other hand, there is no Palestinian state either, and hence they cannot be considered Palestinian citizens.
In one paragraph dealing with the shortage of classrooms in the city, the report refers to Arab citizens in east Jerusalem without using the word "Palestinian" to describe their lack of Israeli citizenship: "Based on population data from the Central Bureau of Statistics, the NGO Ir Amim estimated in previous years a shortage of 2,500 classrooms for non-Israeli children resident in East Jerusalem and 18,600 non-Israeli children in Jerusalem were not enrolled in any school."
A senior administration official told Israel Hayom that "the goal of this report is to maximize accuracy. Being accurate and factual has been the hallmark of this administration's foreign policy."
The official added: "This report brings the region closer to peace because as it has been said repeatedly, peace can only be built on a foundation of truth, anything else will crumble and fail."
The administration further said that it was surprised by the strong disavowal by Israeli Arabs in northern Israel of the president's peace plan and its call for land swaps that would have some Israeli Arabs live in a new Palestinian state. One administration official said that for dozens of years, Arabs in Israel have called themselves Palestinians and therefore the US can't understand why they are so vehemently against becoming citizens of the Palestinian state. "This is a mystery," an official said.
