Biden or not, U.S. policy on Palestine stays the same

With four months left until the elections in the United States, other issues are falling off the media radar. One might think that the genocide in Gaza had ended, as the coverage of it in mainstream media has fallen off dramatically. 

But Israel has been escalating its attacks, openly targeting schools, dropping bombs on children playing soccer, and moving hundreds of thousands of largely homeless Palestinians from one place to another and bombing all of it. 

Meanwhile, American attention has moved inward, debating whether or not the obvious mental incapacity of a man who holds the most powerful position in the world is disqualifying while his full partnership in a genocide of stunning magnitude is not. 

Americans are facing a farcical election decision even though the stakes in that election could not be higher for the United States and, just as much, for the rest of the world. As the Republican and Democratic national conventions approach, each party is now working on hammering out their respective 2024 platforms.

A party platform is a non-binding statement of policy that is meant to provide voters with some sense of what the party as a whole stands for. It is quite common for presidents and members of Congress to depart significantly from their party’s platform once they are elected, but as a political document, it has some meaning in setting expectations for advocacy and a referential framework for lobbyists. 

What does this mean for Palestine, for Gaza, for the ongoing genocide, and for the massive suppression of dissent on the matter that has swept across not only American campuses but across American culture more broadly?

Republicans

With the Republican National Convention scheduled for July 15, their platform is largely complete. They have more uniformity within their party than the Democrats do, so the process is simpler and the platform itself is much vaguer on many issues.

The GOP party platform vows to “stand with Israel, and seek peace in the Middle East. We will rebuild our Alliance Network in the Region to ensure a future of Peace, Stability, and Prosperity.”

In a separate section on antisemitism, the platform states, that Republicans “support revoking Visas of Foreign Nationals who support terrorism and jihadism.”

Taken together, this seems clear enough. We can be assured that Israel will have all the support it needs in slaughtering Palestinians. With Republican mega-donor Miriam Adelson pledging $100 million to Donald Trump’s campaign in exchange for a promise to allow Israel to annex the West Bank, it’s clear where a Trump presidency is heading and, outside of an outlier or two like Rep. Thomas Massie, who often votes against what Israel wants (not out of love for Palestinians) there isn’t a Republican who would have any problem with this.  

Republicans are likely to lean back into the Abraham Accords and try to do what Joe Biden has so far failed to do: conclude an agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel. But where Biden’s efforts have focused on fully normalized relations, it is possible that the Republicans and Trump will view “rebuilding our Alliance Network in the Region” in military terms if Israel’s ongoing genocide continues to make full Israeli-Saudi normalization impossible. 

The Republicans would place a much higher priority on such an alliance than the Democrats because of the significant isolationist streak among many of Trump’s supporters. Where Democrats feel some heat because their progressive, Muslim, Arab, and younger constituents support Palestinian rights, Republicans are concerned that they not be seen by their isolationist voters as bringing the U.S. closer to a new Mideast war. 

Thus, a Saudi-Israeli military alliance, which in many ways already quietly exists, does all they need it to do. It’s more than enough for Trump to claim he’s made more “peace” in the region, and that kind of cooperation diminishes the need for U.S. boots on the ground in the region. 

More chilling is what the Republicans are likely to do to crush dissent. Deportations will certainly be a tool they would use to defuse protests against ongoing American support for Israeli crimes. And we have seen the sort of tactics they have used in Congress to go after university leaders they deem insufficiently draconian in combatting support for Palestinian rights. 

We can infer from these brief statements in the platform that a Republican administration will be aggressive in attacking advocates for Palestinian rights. The reforms in the proposed overhaul of the federal government in the infamous Project 2025 document can reliably be expected to change the rules for nonprofit organizations and lobbying groups to close off the few avenues groups have to try to change U.S. policy toward Palestine and Israel. That would be added to the core of the Project 2025 plan, which is to staff the federal bureaucracy with loyalists, so there will be no one for Palestine advocates to talk to in the Executive Branch that would be at all sympathetic.

Project 2025 also talks about a regional security alliance including Israel and the Gulf States; proposes a complete cutoff of funding for the Palestinian Authority with no mention of anything to replace it, placing Palestinians in the Occupied Territories completely at Israel’s mercy; and proposes slashing USAID funding as well, ordering any such funding to “advance the Abraham Accords” and draining Palestinians in the region of still more of the scant resources they have for survival.

Under Republican rule, the picture is not pretty. The question, then, is how much better would the Democrats be?

Democrats

As we mentioned, the Democratic platform is far less developed than the Republicans, even though the Democratic convention is only six weeks away. Moreover, whereas the Republican agenda is mostly dictated by Trump, there are more competing forces among the Democrats. 

When it comes to Palestine, those forces include the significant “Uncommitted” movement, which generated tens of thousands of protest votes against Joe Biden’s support of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. 

The mainstream of the Democratic party wants to maintain the same stance the party took in 2020. In that platform, the party declared its absolute support for Israel, its opposition to BDS, and its affirmation of Jerusalem as Israel’s “united” capital. It differentiated itself from the Republicans by advocating a two-state solution and opposing unilateral Israeli annexation of any part of the West Bank, but the platform was, on the whole, a big step toward an even more pro-Israel stance than the party had held for years.

Palestine and Israel have been the site of contention for Democrats at the last three conventions, including an appalling display in 2012 when a voice vote on a controversial plank affirming Jerusalem as Israel’s capital was proclaimed to have garnered two-thirds of the vote when it was obvious that the crowd was very much divided on the question. 

This year promises to be no different. 

In defending the status quo, Halie Soifer of the very influential Jewish Democratic Council of America (JDCA), argued that “Eighty-two percent of Jewish voters identify as pro-Israel and have an emotional attachment to Israel, and 74% approve of President Biden’s handling of the war with Hamas, according to a November poll…The Democratic Party platform language on Israel should not be diluted from the strong starting point of four years ago.”

That Soifer needed to reach all the way back to November is telling. At that point, October 7 was still fresh and anyone trying to expose Israel’s and Biden’s gross lies and exaggerations of the actions taken on that day was still confined to ridicule and marginalization. By February, a poll by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding found that 50% of American Jews and 57% of Jewish Democrats wanted a permanent ceasefire. 

Elianne Farhat, a leader of the Uncommitted movement, countered Soifer by calling for an arms embargo against Israel and saying, “I’d ask you to consider the overwhelming sentiment among our constituents: 80% of Democrats support a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, 52% of Americans and 62% of Biden voters advocate for halting arm[s] sales to Israel.”

There will likely be more debate about the platform for the next five weeks. It’s not within the realm of possibility that a halt to arms sales will be included, and even some warning language about how Israel uses it would almost certainly require an enormous effort, if it can be accomplished at all.

But, especially given the increasing calls within Israel for its government to agree to a permanent ceasefire and large-scale prisoner exchange, it is possible that the platform could include some language calling for just that. Again, it would be non-binding, but it would be a rare rebuke to a sitting Israeli prime minister, as Netanyahu continues to block efforts at a ceasefire. 

Democrats are clearly trying to find some way to mollify critics of their policy in Gaza. As Vice President Kamala Harris has emerged as the likely candidate to take over for Biden should he bow to the growing pressure for him to step aside, she and other Democrats have been portraying her as a moderate voice in the Biden administration.  

But advocates should not place hope there. Harris was an AIPAC darling during her brief stint in the Senate. She’s not likely to change if she becomes president.

In practice, we can expect the Republicans’ public agenda to be a blunt statement of their racism, while Democrats will be less forthright. On the ground, there is good reason to believe that Democrats will want to continue the two-state delusion, while Republicans will encourage Israel to kill it once and for all with annexation. 

As is so often the case with U.S. policy on Palestine, you pick your poison, but there is no healthy choice.