PALESTINE: TRUMP OR BIDEN DOESN’T REALLY MATTER

Tue 10 November 2020:

“It’s about time we stop apologising for our support for Israel,” he told lawmakers in June 1986. “It is the best $3bn investment we make. If there weren’t an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interests in the region.”

The following year marked the beginning of the annual $3bn of military aid Israel continues to receive from the US.

This is Biden, a self-avowed Zionist, has attended many pro-Israeli lobby group meetings, such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and J Street.

Congratulations @JoeBiden and @KamalaHarris. Joe, we’ve had a long & warm personal relationship for nearly 40 years, and I know you as a great friend of Israel. I look forward to working with both of you to further strengthen the special alliance between the U.S. and Israel.

— Benjamin Netanyahu (@netanyahu) November 8, 2020

 

In October 1973, newly elected Delaware Senator Joe Biden visited Israel on his first official overseas trip and met Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir.

The 30-year-old was visibly moved as Meir explained what she said was Israel’s militarily dangerous situation surrounded by “enemy states”, but he cheered up when the Israeli leader revealed what she said was Israel’s secret weapon: The Israelis have nowhere else to go.

“Whether it is Biden or Trump, to the Palestinian cause, it would not matter.” Following Joe Biden’s victory, Palestinians don’t expect a dramatic change in their fortunes or for the US policy to be any less pro-Israel

“Whether it is Biden or Trump, to the Palestinian cause, it would not matter.”

Following Joe Biden’s victory, Palestinians don’t expect a dramatic change in their fortunes or for the US policy to be any less pro-Israel pic.twitter.com/CUXxFXvejg

— TRT World (@trtworld) November 9, 2020

Trump and Palestine

Trump administration cut off US aid to the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank, formally recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and moved the US embassy there from Tel Aviv. Trump refused to condemn settlement building and expansion as illegal.

Trump also brokered “normalisation” deals with three Arab countries who recognised Israel without so much as demanding Palestinian gains in return, leaving the Palestinian leadership increasingly isolated.

Several Palestinian news agencies carried statements by Palestinian officials with their perspectives on what President-elect Biden’s victory would mean.

Nabil Shaath, the special representative of President Mahmoud Abbas, said the Palestinian leadership does not expect a strategic change in US policy towards the Palestinians, but getting rid of the era of Trump – which he described as “the worst” – is an advantage.

“From what we heard from Joe Biden and his deputy Kamala Harris, I think he will be more balanced and less submissive to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – thus less harmful to us than Trump,” he said.

In the same context, the head of the political bureau of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, called on Biden to set “a historic correction of the course of the unjust US policies against our people, which has made the United States a partner in injustice and aggression, and damaged the stability in the region and the world”.

Haniyeh called on the elected administration to withdraw from Trump’s Middle East plan and cancel the decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.