A Biden administration is likely to implement a significant shift in US policy concerning Israel and the Middle East broadly. Will a President Biden be captured by officials from the former Obama administration and be swayed by radical elements in the Democratic party? It is understandable that within Israel there is a considerable level of apprehension about a potential Biden-Harris administration. Nowhere outside the US will the outcome of the presidential election have a greater impact.
During the US presidential election campaign, a video by Yossi Dagan, the Mayor of Samaria with former Palestinian terrorist and now peace activist, Muhammad Masaed, had a powerful message. They urged support for President Trump. Why? They explained that the rate of conflict and terrorism deaths on both sides was substantially lower under Trump’s policies. During the Obama years, terrorism and conflict killed 4,127 Arabs and 204 Israelis compared to 531 Arabs and 37 Israelis during the Trump years. Allowing for the different durations, this is a reduction in the death rates of about 75 per cent. Similarly, a group of six senior Israeli Rabbis wrote ‘to you it is a ballot, to us it is a question of life itself’.
Extremist Arab Palestinian and terrorist leaders made it clear they wanted to see a President Biden and not a President Trump. Since 3 November, Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority (PA) has called for a Biden administration to move the US embassy out of Jerusalem and back to Tel Aviv. Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh goes further and has urged that recognition
of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital be reversed. Early indications are a Biden administration will not rush to do either.
President-elect Joe Biden has a mixed track record when it comes to Israel. In 1982 Senator Biden famously clashed with then Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Biden threatened to withhold US foreign aid to Israel demanding concessions for Arab Palestinians. Begin’s response is engraved in Israeli folklore ‘Don’t threaten us with cutting off your aid. It will not work.
I am not a Jew with trembling knees…’ as he then schooled Biden on the historical traumas faced by the Jewish people. However, Biden has generally had a fairly positive approach to Israel, certainly more so than President Obama.
Read the cover article by David Adler (AJA president) in The Spectator.