“In my 34-year career,” presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden told the Jewish weekly magazine, The Forward, in 2007, “I have never wavered from the notion that the only time progress has ever been made in the Middle East is when the Arab nations have known that there is no daylight between us and Israel. So the idea of being the ‘honest broker’ is not I think, like some of my democratic colleagues call for, is not the answer.”
There is no reason to think Biden is any more inclined toward fairness between Israel and the Palestinians today than he was back then. He maintains his self-proclaimed “Zionist” identity, and his rhetoric continues to reflect a deep bias in favor of Israel. But if Biden has remained in place, United States policy has lurched far in favor of extreme elements in Israel. The Trump administration has greenlit unilateral Israeli annexation in the West Bank, while abandoning any pretense of supporting even the minimal goal of a truncated Palestinian state, dependent on Israel, as the now-abandoned Oslo peace process envisioned. Read more at Responsible Statecraft
[…] Democratic Party has raised hopes that he might be pressed further left on Palestinian rights. As I pointed out recently, there is no doubt that his policies are far preferable to Donald Trump’s on many issues, and the […]