In the last few weeks, Prime Minister has held a round of consultations about a possible change of administration in the US. Unlike what people are saying, despite his clear preference for President Donald Trump, Netanyahu has not burned bridges with the Democratic Party, and certainly not with Joe Biden, with whom he was in close contact long before Biden served as Barack Obama's vice president.
Biden appreciates Netanyahu and has taken care to respect him, even when the prime minister's relations with the president under whom Biden served were not like the ones he enjoys with Trump. When the US State Department, encouraged by some of the Israeli media, protested permits for construction in Jerusalem that were issued a day before Biden landed in Israel for an official visit, the vice president smoothed things over and continued his visit as usual, without mentioning the incident.
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Netanyahu thinks that a Biden victory could lead to a hostile US stance on settlements in Judea and Samaria, as well as restore the regular condemnations of any construction there and possibly even renew American pressure for peace talks with the Palestinians, it won't be as hard or as complicated to stand up to these demands as it was in Obama's time. Biden is not Obama – far from it.
If there is a concern, it's that there is talk of renewing the nuclear deal with Iran. Biden supported the deal all along, and criticized Trump for withdrawing from it. Netanyahu's hope of avoiding a confrontation over the issue, if and when it comes up, lies in the new peace agreements with the United Arab Emirates and other moderate Arab countries. The prime minister knows that in the new situation, he will not be standing up to the American administration on his own. His new allies will be there with him.
Biden will have to decide whether to go back to the Iranian path or maintain ties with the Emirates, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia. It looks like he won't be able to walk this very fine line from both directions.
The main problem raised in the talks senior Likud officials have been holding, with the polls predicting a victory for Biden, is the possible effect it might have on Israeli politics. They said that a Biden victory would be wind in the sails of the anti-government protesters. Although most of the Israeli public would like to see Trump stay in power, some are hoping he goes, including plenty of media figures.
Likud officials were saying that if Biden wins, all the talk about extremism, harm to democracy, and the need to fix society would be stepped up. The way they see it, Trump and Netanyahu are one and the same. Not only political allies, but cut from the same cloth. If one goes, people will try with all their might to push out the other.
So the Likud has been preparing a counter-narrative. They said that a Biden victory would highlight the need for a prime minister who knows how to stand up for Israel's interests, especially on the Iranian issue, and will not buckle to every whim of a president or secretary of state. Netanyahu, for his supporters, excelled in holding fast with a hostile US president in power, and so we must not pull up stakes for a different Israeli leader, especially at this time.
After the US election it looks like an Israeli election in the midst of COVID is not such a far-fetched scenario, like some high-ranking officials in the Likud and Blue and White are trying to present it. The US just held an election at the height of COVID and the sky didn't fall. Netanyahu sees how Avi Nissankoren and Benny Gantz are promoting the appointment of a State Attorney, in violation of the coalition agreement, and is not doing anything out of concern that he might be accused of leading the country into an election during the pandemic. Gantz is giving him an ultimatum, but not carrying it out, for the same reason. Maybe the US election will loosen them up a bit, when they realize that an election is not the worst thing that could happen during COVID – keeping the current government in place, for example, could be much worse.
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