Here is what the Democratic Party’s Israel lobby sees as Israel/Palestine policy under a Biden administration.
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.
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.
Once the hope of liberal Zionists, Benny Gantz is now siding with settlers against Netanyahu for political advantage. Angered by the move, dedicated Zionist Michael Koplow urges U.S. Jewish community to open discourse to include a one-state outcome.
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.
Jared Kushner got a diplomatic coup today. But Israel remains committed to annexation of the West Bank, the Israeli press is reporting, notwithstanding the historic deal between the UAE and Israel to normalize relations.
Beinart’s declaration of support for one democratic state has exposed intolerant attitudes among liberal Zionists. For instance, Palestinian leader Ayman Odeh says he wants to represent all Israelis and be like MLK, but Michael Koplow of IPF says he can’t represent Israeli Jews. Really? Why not? And why should an American be indulging such racism?
Israeli snipers shot nearly 8,000 protesters at the Gaza fence, killing 214, including 59 on the day that the US moved the embassy to Jerusalem; and advocates for Israel such as Dennis Ross ignore this river of suffering when they say that “Nothing happened” when we moved the embassy.
Liberal and centrist American Zionists regard Trump’s plan as an existential threat to “the Jewish democracy.” These Israel supporters say the plan will move Israel toward annexing much of the West Bank, thereby ending any possibility of a two-state solution and leading to a binational state in which Palestinians will demand equal rights.
The only country that supports Trump’s assassination of Soleimani is Israel. And no surprise, because the killing bogs America down in Israel’s regional conflicts in the Middle East and the “obsession” with Iran is “just not in the American interest,” says Ilan Goldenberg, formerly a foreign policy aide in the Obama administration.