Israeli government believes Trump has set new normal for US acceptance of Israel expansion, even if Biden wins

Israeli leaders believe that Donald Trump has set the new normal for US-Israel relations: total acceptance of Israeli expansion. And if Joe Biden is elected president today, Israelis will expect compliance from him; and Biden will likely do little to take Netanyahu on. That’s the view of Israel lobbyists as the pageant of democracy unfolds in the U.S.

Here are some of those opinions.

David Halperin, executive director of the centrist Israel Policy Forum, says in a podcast that even though a Biden administration would look more “like what we are used to” in U.S. policy, Biden won’t be able to just hit reset. Israel will resist.

We can’t assume that this is just going back to the relationship as normal. The significant steps that Trump has moved, not just on a range of issues in Israel’s favor but in the favor of Israel’s most rightwing impulses on a host of issues– mean that even reverting back to some sense of normalcy by a Biden administration would be seen [by Israel] as substantial shifts in US policy and that is likely to be more controversial in a sense… viewed in the lens of actually going against the right and what many conservative voices view as the new pro-Israel baseline that Trump has set. How that is going to look going forward is going to be an issue in a Biden administration.

The Israeli right is “concerned across the board for Biden,” Halperin said, because they fear that he will be influenced by “more progressive members of the Democratic Party” who want to condition aid to Israel over its conduct and reenter the Iran deal.

Halperin said what everyone in the Israel lobby says, it is impossible to paint Joe Biden as antagonistic to the state of Israel. Just look at how accepting he was back in 2010, Halperin notes, when Israel announced new Jerusalem settlements as he was visiting the country. A giant insult– Biden basically shrugged off. And it won’t be so easy for Biden to get right back into the Iran deal, even if he says he will.

Michael Koplow of the Israel Policy Forum said on the same podcast that Biden may actually be a better friend to Israel than Trump because he will not threaten Israel’s bipartisan support in the U.S. Whereas if Trump gets a second term, “we will almost certainly see a clear US greenlight for some specific manner of annexation” of the West Bank, and the result will be cries for conditioning aid to Israel from the Democratic Party.

So far only a couple of Congresspeople have supported the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign targeting Israel over its conduct. That will change, Koplow said. “I don’t assume that BDS will remain so fringe in the halls of Congress if Israel goes ahead with annexation at the Trump administration’s urging.”

Haaretz says the main difference between Biden and Trump on Israel policy is Biden is “not connected” to Sheldon Adelson, Trump’s biggest donor, who does not believe Palestinians exist and who sought the destruction of the Iran deal. Trump’s pro-Netanyahu actions have surely been transactional, in exchange for Adelson’s tens of millions of dollars, even if the U.S. media doesn’t like to say so.

J Street says that Trump is holding a fire sale on pro-Israel actions to please Sheldon Adelson

As the Trump administration fears American voters will soon send it packing, it is scrambling to give its right-wing friends as many gifts as possible on the way out. Reports indicate the agreement may have resulted in part from pressure by Sheldon Adelson — the pro-settlements mega-donor who is a major benefactor of Ariel University, and who has pumped tens of millions of dollars into the president’s struggling campaign.

David Makovsky of WINEP echoes the point, that Netanyahu is grabbing all he can get now, a host of settlement-building deep in the West Bank, consistent with the Trump peace plan that accepts Israeli annexation.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s uncertainty about who will win the U.S. presidential election suggests that the recent [settlement] unit approvals are an effort to take more provocative actions in 2020, since a potential Joe Biden administration would be less supportive of such moves in 2021….But Netanyahu seemingly views the plan as a ceiling for Palestinian demands rather than a floor…

How outspoken will the Democratic Party be about Israeli expansion? All three Democratic candidates for House Foreign Affairs committee chairmanship (replacing pro-Israel warhorse Eliot Engel) told J Street they oppose the Trump move to allow scientific research funds to be spent in the occupied territories. Joaquin Castro was emphatic on this score: the settlements “violate international law.”

Even Brad Sherman, a strong Israel supporter, told J Street, “The Trump administration’s action [allowing such research] is transparently political.”

It’s one thing for those Dems to criticize, another to sanction. Dems are wary of doing so. Though surveys show that a majority of American voters and nearly 3/4 of Democratic ones support conditioning aid to Israel over its conduct, the Israel lobby is plainly seeking to contain the progressive base of the Democratic Party.

J Street’s statement attacking Trump’s fire sale for Adelson included an attack on the left. J Street equated the left with Trump, saying that both Trump and the BDS campaign insist “that there is no difference between the State of Israel and the territory it occupies beyond the Green Line.”

Mark Mellman of Democratic Majority for Israel also attacks the left base of the party, in a piece in the Times of Israel touting Biden’s “absolute, total, unvarnished commitment to Israel’s security.” Don’t worry about reports the Democratic Party is moving in an “anti-Israel direction,” Mellman says.

Joe Biden defeated the anti-Israel forces in his party to win its nomination—and then Biden refused to give in to those who wanted a less pro-Israel party platform, insisting instead that the document reflect his longstanding commitment to the Jewish state.

Mellman assures us that Biden will lie down when Israel tests him. He points out that Joe Biden helped convince President Obama to issue his only veto at the U.N. Security Council in 2011 to defeat a resolution critical of Israeli settlements, and later Biden tried to stop Obama from allowing an anti-settlements resolution to go through in December 2016. That resolution went through.

And remember, Trump took a very similar position to Biden then, trying to thwart the Obama administration’s plan, as president-elect.

Aaron David Miller says Biden is no Obama, but Israel better make nice.

Anyone believing Biden- Bibi will be a honeymoon should lay down wait quietly until feeling passes. But neither shld anyone believe Trump propaganda that Biden is an enemy of Israel. Israel is in Biden’s DNA. He’s a Clinton not an Obama. Much will depend on Bibi as it shld.

Chemi Shalev at Haaretz says that the real division here is not between Netanyahu and Biden but between the two Jewish communities thousands of miles apart. Israeli Jews have a “blind worship” of Trump, yet another poll shows. American Jews dislike Trump by a similar margin.

According to the poll, 68 percent believe Trump would be “better for Israel,” and only 12 percent think Biden would. In a previous poll, Trump trounced Biden with a whopping 40 percent majority, 70 to 30, and an even more emphatic 54 percent majority among Israeli Jews, 77 to 23.

Israeli Jewish public opinion is right wing populist with great tolerance for racism, Shalev says, a political culture at great odds with that of American Jews.

David Halperin at the Israel Policy Forum has the same concern– “unfortunately likely more distancing” between Israeli and US Jews.

As for Biden, don’t worry about him. As Shira Efron of an Israeli security thinktank told the Israel Policy Forum podcast, “He has proven his support for Israel over decades and decades. I really don’t see any reason for issues with this administration.”