US President Joe Biden was expected to push for the opening of a de facto embassy to the Palestinians in eastern Jerusalem during his visit this week. He was also scheduled to visit East Jerusalem without Israeli officials.

The net effect of these moves would be to strengthen Palestinian claims to the eastern half of Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state.

But you know who’s opinion is being utterly ignored on this matter by Biden and all other politicians? The 400,000 Arabs who live in Jerusalem.

In a poll commissioned by the Washington Institute for Near East Studies and carried out by the Palestine Center for Public Opinion, it was found that almost half (48% plurality) of the Arabs living in Jerusalem do not want to become citizens of a State of Palestine.

They prefer to become full citizens of Israel, or at least to maintain the status quo.

Only 43% of Arabs living in East Jerusalem said they want to be incorporated into a Palestinian state.

Equally surprising is that even among Palestinians living in areas already under full Palestinian Authority control (Ramallah, Bethlehem, Nablus, etc) a strong 25% minority said they, too, would opt to become Israeli, given the chance.

In other words, the outside forces pushing for a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital seem to want it even more than the Palestinian Arabs themselves.