New Facts on the Ground, But Also Old Frictions

Thanks to President Trump, the US embassy has relocated from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The Golan Heights is sovereign Israeli territory, not a bargaining chip with Syria. Egypt’s radical Muslim Brotherhood leadership — whom President Obama endorsed enthusiastically, making a special trip to Cairo to do so — are either dead or in prison. The cash the Obama administration airlifted to Iran was misspent. Bankrupt is the doctrine that Israeli territorial concessions to the Palestinians are the prerequisite for solving the Arab-Israeli conflict.

If Biden tries to turn the clock back four years, will this bring Israel into direct conflict with the new administration?

“There will be major friction over the Palestinian issue,” predicts Yoram Ettinger, a former Congressional affairs liaison to Israel’s embassy in Washington. “The Biden administration will have to decide if the Palestinian issue is more important than joining forces against the real primary threats to the region, and in fact to the US itself, namely the ayatollahs and potentially Erdogan of Turkey.”

Danny Ayalon, Israel’s former ambassador to the United States, expressed concern over Biden’s eagerness to rejoin the nuclear deal with Iran that Trump jettisoned.