Here is what the Democratic Party’s Israel lobby sees as Israel/Palestine policy under a Biden administration.
An Israel lobby group associated with the Democratic Party allows rightwing Israeli Yossi Klein Halevi to tell US Jews to marshal opposition to Biden on the Iran deal. “Many Israelis still harbor deep resentment toward the American Jewish community for not opposing more vigorously the Iran deal in 2015… Will the Jewish community take an active role in trying to convey to Biden that returning to the 2015 deal even with cosmetic changes would be seen by Israelis as a betrayal?”
Construction bids for a new Israeli settlement cutting off Palestinian access to their supposed capital of Jerusalem will come in days after Biden takes office. The EU and Palestine have decried Givat Hamatos as the death of the two state solution. Experts say Biden will likely do nothing to prevent construction in February.
Trump will push annexation of West Bank, and if Netanyahu sees it as in his political interest to be antagonistic to Biden, he will accede, say two prominent Israel lobbyists. The issue could be Trump’s way of sowing difficulties for Biden.
US election showed that American Jews and Israeli Jews could not be more different, American Jews dislike Netanyahu two-to-one, and so the Israel lobby is divided forever, because the Jewish community is divided on the Israel question, with many young Jews supporting boycott. And that divide will continue to spur political debate.
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.
Michael Koplow, an Israel promoter, sees a philosophical distinction between two Zionist concepts, Barak’s villa in the jungle, and Jabotinsky’s iron wall. But both are colonialist conceits about the surrounding non-Jewish societies, and there is no significant difference between them.
Liberal Zionists should be ashamed of arguments against Israeli annexation — calls for a “strong Jewish majority”, or for “separation” from Palestinians — that echo Jim Crow slogans of yesteryear. And yet J Street and Americans for Peace Now and Israel Policy Forum routinely platform speakers who make such appeals.
Biden’s likely Defense Secretary Michele Flournoy shows an Israel lobby group she’s got the right line on annexation. It would hurt the special relationship. “I would hate to see some in Congress decided they are going to hold hostage our security assistance to Israel as a way of protesting their policies in the West Bank.”
Israel is about to jeopardize its support in the Democratic Party by annexing parts of West Bank, but Netanyahu is going ahead evidently with Trump’s blessing. And a fire set by the Israeli military in Jordan Valley last week shows the plan to confiscate more Palestinian land, says journalist Alex Fishman of Ynet on call with Israel Policy Forum.