It slipped under the radar, but it was significant: Last week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the United States would merge its consulate general, which provides services to Palestinians, with the embassy in Jerusalem.

Pompeo said the US was carrying out the move for reasons of “efficiency.” Why have a separate US consul in Jerusalem when Washington now has a full-fledged embassy in Israel’s capital? Palestinians will now receive services from the Department for Palestinian Affairs at the embassy, under the direction of US Ambassador David Friedman.

But in the Middle East, even the slightest insertion of a comma can shake mountains — and this is no different. For decades, the US had two separate bodies to deal with Israelis and Palestinians. Some saw this as an expression of support for the two-state solution, a concrete example of Washington’s stated policy. Either way, the reality was that the consul once reported directly to Washington, not to the ambassador in Israel.

And now for the real question — why? Is Washington punishing the Palestinians? Is this yet another downgrade in relations? Or is it just a technical, administrative issue?

Both the Palestinians and the Israelis maintain that it was a preplanned move. Saeb Erekat, a high-level official in the Palestinian Authority, decried the decision as having “nothing to do with efficiency and a lot to do with pleasing an ideological US team that is willing to disband the foundations of American foreign policy and of the international system in order to reward Israeli violations and crimes.” Israel’s consul general in New York, Dani Dayan, tweeted his support for the move.

Along with the closing of the PLO offices in Washington, it seems that the Trump administration is using all available means to make clear that they take their long-awaited peace plan seriously, and they expect the Palestinians to do the same. And if the Palestinians don’t? It seems there could be more consequences.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 732)