Ever since the Palestine Liberation Organisation opened its offices in the United States in 1994 — as the sole representative of the Palestinian people — successive US administrations have found it to be an invaluable tool when it comes to dealing with negotiations on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

But, in an alarming development on Saturday, the State Department said the PLO’s Washington office will be closed. US officials claimed the Palestinians had ‘run afoul’ of an obscure US law by calling for Israelis to be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court.

Just a day earlier, the State Department had said the office could stay open if President Donald Trump felt the Palestinians were serious about peace talks with Israel. Trump has 90 days to take his decision.

Understandably, the Palestinian National Authority has taken a dim view of the American machinations, with top negotiator Saeb Erekat describing them as “very unfortunate and unacceptable”. He accused Washington of giving in to pressure from the regime of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and that charge certainly has merit, although the Israeli premier deflected it saying the threat is a “matter of US law”.

In a sign of how quickly things can spiral out of control when it comes to this vexed conflict, the Palestinians have threatened to cut off all communication and freeze all ties with the US if it carries out its threat to close the PLO office in Washington.

At a time when Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner, and US Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt, have been tasked with the job of finding a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by negotiating the “deal of the century”, closing the PLO office seems to be the last thing America should be doing. Clearly, Washington needs to rethink its decision.

Though it has said “this measure should not be seen as a signal that the US is backing off” peace efforts, it is exactly what it will — and should — be seen as. Trump has laid great emphasis on his ability to do what has eluded so many other US administrations. Closing the offices of one of its two primary interlocutors is definitely not the way of going about resolving the conflict.