As long as the winner of the presidential election has yet to be determined with certainty, Israel will maintain Swiss neutrality. Our ministers and the man at their head will secretly hope for a miracle that sees US President Donald Trump nevertheless succeed in securing another four more years in the White House. But declarations in this spirit will not be made publicly. This is certainly the case if Democratic presidential candidate Biden appears to have the greatest chances of ultimately emerging as the victor.
Should Biden enter the Oval Office, US ties with Israel will undoubtedly shift in a heartbeat. Biden will, of course, first be required to deal with domestic issues, first and foremost the coronavirus. On the international front, too, there are other more pressing issues to contend with, chief among them, tensions with China. Yet sooner or later, the Middle East will be on the table. Biden may have a soft spot for us, but he will aspire to reach a new agreement with Iran on the nuclear issue. He won't, however, necessarily succeed given that the ayatollahs in Tehran are not exactly thrilled with the changes he hopes to make to the original agreement.
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But with or without these amendments, Israel will likely find itself once again in a contrarian positions, and then, simple as that, our first confrontation with Washington is upon us. The next unavoidable disputes will concern the Palestinian issue. In order to please the anti-Israel wing of his party, Biden will walk rescind many of the steps Trump carried out as president. The PLO office in Washington will reopen, the funds for UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees will be reinstated, and perhaps a US consulate will be opened in east Jerusalem. There will also likely be a demand to halt construction in Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem. After all, it was Biden who caused an uproar over a negligible statutory approval of a construction project in the capital's east Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo. The bottom line is that should the Democrats take control of both the White House and the Senate, Israel will once again be walking on eggshells with the US.
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The long-established principle of not arguing in public with Israel will likely change under Biden. Too many on the Democratic side are too blind to see how the sanctification of the alliance between Washington and Jerusalem has done only good for one of the most volatile regions in the world. On the grounds of working toward peace, the radical wing of the party, as in the days of former President Barack Obama, will push Israel into a corner. But we've been there before, and this will most definitely not bring peace; if anything, it will likely bring war. Of course, we will be spared these conflicts should Trump somehow succeed in ensuring himself a second term in office. In this case, we should expect to see the continuation of the intimate alliance between the two countries. It is highly likely that there will be more peace accords to come and that the United States, together with Israel, will continue to exert heavy pressure on Iran. Of one thing we can be certain, Trump has raised the bar on US-Israel ties so high, it would be difficult for any successor to outdo him.
