Many progressives — along with a lot of the Arab community — are furious with President Biden over his handling of Israel’s invasion of Gaza. We got a concrete indication of that rage when several hundred thousand people voted “uncommitted” in the Super Tuesday Democratic primaries, particularly in Michigan, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Colorado and Minnesota.
The “uncommitted” bloc is fully justified in its anger. The ongoing protests have had an effect, as witnessed by Biden telling Israel in his State of the Union speech not to use humanitarian aid as “a bargaining chip” and declaring that “the only real solution to the situation is a two-state solution.”
But I rise not to discuss Joe Biden. Like it or not, those who feel strongly about the Israel/Palestine conflict will face a binary choice in the November presidential election: Biden or Donald Trump. Regardless of third party candidates, one of the two major party nominees will take over the reins of Washington’s foreign policy.
So we need to ask ourselves: Who will be better for the Palestinians, Biden or Trump?
It’s not even close. Biden is pursuing a two-state solution. He wants the Palestinian Authority to be a partner for peace. He agrees with the international community that Israel’s settlements in the occupied territories are illegal. And as he noted in his State of the Union speech, his administration is hard at work trying to fashion a long-term peace plan that would include the creation of a Palestinian state.
And Trump? He’s saying next to nothing these days about Israel/Palestine. Luckily, we have his record from his term as president, and it was marked by an ongoing, systematic betrayal of the Palestinian national movement.
Let’s review.
Trump appointed a pro-settler opponent of a two-state solution as ambassador to Israel
In Dec. 2016, President-elect Trump signaled what his policy would be when he nominated David Friedman to be the US ambassador to Israel.
An orthodox Jew from Long Island, Friedman was one of Trump’s campaign advisors on the Middle East. But he had no particular expertise; the two men were connected through business. Friedman is a lawyer who represented Trump in a number of bankruptcy cases. They became close friends; Friedman was one of the two signatories of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner’s wedding ketubah.
It is not unusual for presidents to reward friends — including those with no foreign policy experience — with ambassadorships. But Friedman brought to his new role a full-throated support for Israel’s illegal settlements and an equally strong opposition to a two-state solution.
He headed up American Friends of Bet El Institutions, raising millions for that West Bank settlement. He supports Israeli annexation of the West Bank. He opposes a two-state solution, and refers to Israel’s military occupation of Palestinian territories as the “alleged occupation.”
Friedman referred to J Street, the self-described “pro-Israel, pro-peace, pro-democracy” lobby in Washington, DC that backs a two-state solution, as “far worse than kapos [Jews who served as guards in Nazi concentration camps]. “It’s hard to imagine anyone worse,” he wrote in a 2016 op-ed for Israel National News.
Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, driving the peace process into a ditch
One year after picking Friedman to be his ambassador, Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and said he would move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, knowing full well that in doing so he was driving the peace process into a ditch.
Trump’s move reversed nearly 70 years of bipartisan US foreign policy. Since Israel’s founding in 1948, every president, Republican or Democrat, joined with the rest of the world in refusing to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital because the international community agreed that the city’s status, along with other core issues such as the right of Palestinian refugees and their descendants to return, should be left to the two parties to settle in diplomatic negotiations. The topic of Jerusalem is particularly fraught because the Palestinians want East Jerusalem to be the capital of a future state.
Trump characterized the move as “a long overdue step to advance the peace process,” saying the previous approach had failed to bring the two sides closer to a final agreement.
But he knew better.
Several weeks after the announcement, Trump attended the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Ahead of his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump said the quiet part out loud regarding how his move affected Jerusalem as a diplomatic issue: “We took it off the table. We don’t have to talk about it anymore." Netanyahu, of course, was thrilled.
Not surprisingly, the Palestinian Authority angrily cut off diplomatic contacts with the US in response to Trump’s move.
“President Trump just destroyed any possibility of a two-state [solution],” Palestine Liberation Organization Secretary-General Saeb Erekat said in a statement.
“Instead of encouraging the parties to sit together … to put all core issues including Jerusalem on the table and negotiate in good faith, he dictates,” Erakat told CNN.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas made what in hindsight seems like a prescient prediction. In a televised address, he said Trump was helping “the extremist organizations to wage a religious war that would harm the entire region.” He expressed fear of “wars that will never end, which we have warned about.”
Recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital was a huge gift to Netanyahu, but it was by no means Trump’s last present to the Israeli leader.
Trump choked off the diplomatic pipeline to the Palestinians
Several months later, the Trump administration shuttered the PLO’s diplomatic mission in Washington, DC. The State Department said the PLO had “refused to engage with the U.S. government with respect to peace efforts and otherwise.”
Of course, it was the Trump administration that had systematically set out to exclude the Palestinian side from the peace process; this was just the latest step in that effort.
PLO executive committee member Hanan Ashrawi called the move a form of “crude and vicious blackmail” and “clear proof of American collusion with Israel’s occupation.”
The following month, Trump’s administration said it would abolish the US consulate in Jerusalem and fold its operations into the new embassy in Jerusalem. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed the move did not signal a change in policy and was done solely for “efficiency.”
Like so many things emanating from team Trump, that was a lie.
The consulate had served as a quasi-embassy to the state-in-waiting the Palestinians hoped to create one day. That relationship was shifted to a new team that reported to none other than David Friedman, sworn enemy of the two-state solution.
Former US Ambassador to Israel Ned Walker had supported moving the embassy to Jerusalem, but he denounced the closure of the consulate.
“To put it bluntly, it is a stupid move driven by an ambassador who represents a certain portion of the Israeli political scene — the settlers,” he said in an email to The Los Angeles Times. “It is true that when I cover one eye I can still see, but not as well as with two. Why we want to half-blind ourselves by cutting off the Palestinians makes no sense to me.”
Daniel Kurtzer, a former ambassador to Israel under President George W. Bush, said downgrading the mission to the Palestinians was certain to be counterproductive. “It’s another nail in the coffin that they’re constructing themselves with regard to their desire to advance the peace process,” Kurtzer said.
The Biden administration re-established a diplomatic channel to the Palestinians, but it hasn’t been able to reopen the Jerusalem consulate because Israel won’t give its permission.
Trump’s administration said it no longer considered Israeli settlements to be illegal
In 1979, the US State Department began listing Gaza and the West Bank in its annual reports on Israel’s human rights record. In April 2018, the Trump State Department’s report for 2017 dropped any reference to the territories as being “occupied.” This of course was what Ambassador Friedman — among other extremist backers of Israel — had long wanted.
The abrupt jettisoning of the nearly 40-year-old policy was a foreshadowing.
In June 2019, as Netanyahu was vowing to begin illegally annexing settlements, Friedman told the New York Times that Israel had the right to annex “some” of the West Bank.
Five months later, the Trump administration made it official: It said the US no longer considered Israeli settlements on Palestinian lands to be in violation of international law, reversing four decades of a fundamental American policy. It was another political gift to Netanyahu as he fought to retain power amid inconclusive elections.
Palestinian officials were left — again — to fulminate in frustration. “We cannot express horror and shock because this is a pattern, but that doesn’t make it any less horrific,” longtime PLO diplomat Hanan Ashrawi told the New York Times. “It sends a clear signal that they have total disregard for international law, for what is right and just, and for the requirements of peace.”
Biden administration officials say they had basically ignored Pompeo’s declaration — he never issued a formal legal opinion. Last month, after an Israeli cabinet minister announced plans to build another 3,000 homes in the West Bank, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor John Kirby reiterated Biden’s position that settlements are “inconsistent with international law.”
Trump eliminated humanitarian aid to the Palestinians
In Aug. 2018, the Trump administration eliminated $200 million in aid for non-governmental groups that were providing food aid, health services, education, and infrastructure. The US cut off aid for six East Jerusalem hospitals. Funding was pulled from organizations that were providing breast cancer treatment for thousands of women. Plans to build sorely-needed water treatment facilities in Gaza were suspended.
Trump said he stopped providing the aid as a way to pressure the Palestinians to return to the negotiating table.
The next month, the US ended 70 years of American economic support for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, the body tasked with providing health care, social services, and education to millions of Palestinians.
Of course, UNRWA is now ensnared in a scandal over revelations that a dozen of its 13,000 employees in Gaza participated in Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre. The US and other countries have suspended aid to the agency. On March 4, Israel claimed 450 UNRWA staffers in Gaza are in militant groups, but provided no evidence to back up its claim.
Trump offered a ‘peace plan’ tailored to meet Israeli demands
In Jan. 2020, Trump presented his long-awaited “peace plan.” Flanked by Netanyahu at a White House ceremony, he trumpeted the proposal as a “win-win opportunity” for both sides.
But there were no Palestinian officials present. The plan was developed with input only from the Israeli side, since the Palestinians had cut off contact after Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Trump warned the Palestinians: “After 70 years of little progress, this could be the last opportunity they will ever have.”
The plan would give Israel control over all of Jerusalem. It would force the Palestinians to abandon their claims to large portions of the West Bank. It would not require Israel to dismantle any settlements. It would give Israel the authority to redefine its borders and annex settlements. It would leave the West Bank portion of a future Palestinian state pockmarked with settlements.
It would give Israel the power to decide when Palestinians could assume control over their own security, and it would give Israel the right to reoccupy Palestinian lands if it decided Israeli security was threatened.
The proposal would give Israel control over all of Jerusalem, despite Palestinians’ longstanding demand that the capital of their future state be East Jerusalem. Instead, Trump envisaged the capital in “eastern Jerusalem,” on the outer edges of the city beyond Israel’s security barrier.
Netanyahu later clarified that the proposed Palestinian capital would be in Abu Dis, a Palestinian village on the outskirts of the holy city.
The plan did include a four-year freeze on building Israeli settlements, but Netanyahu later said this only applied to areas where there were no existing settlements, and that as far as he was concerned the plan did not otherwise limit new settlement construction.
Of course, a diplomatic process that only engages with one of two parties to a conflict is destined to fail. Palestinian Authority President Abbas called the proposal “nonsense.” Predictably, the Trump “peace plan” never went anywhere. It was, however, one last political gift to Netanyahu, who was indicted on corruption and fraud charges the same day Trump unveiled the plan, and who was facing another tough reelection campaign.
Trump on the war in Gaza: ‘finish the problem’
How would Trump have handled the war in Gaza? Based on the very little he has said about it, the answer seems to be, he would have done next to nothing.
About a month after the war began, Trump told a Univision interviewer that “you're probably going to have to let this play out.” Beyond that, he offered that “Israel has to do a better job of public relations.”
Have five months of continuous slaughter, destruction and suffering prompted Trump to think more deeply about the conflict? Apparently not.
On March 5, he was asked during a phone appearance on “Fox and Friends” whether he supported how Israel is handling the war.
“You’ve got to finish the problem,” he said. That was the sum total of his analysis.
So returning to my original point: Yes, Biden is deserving of criticism for how he has dealt with the Israeli invasion. But come November, we must all remember that Donald Trump would — again — be an unmitigated disaster when it comes to the Palestinians’ dream of self-determination.