Joe and Bibi talked, but what's it mean? Biden and Israel, the scorecard.

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stljewishlight.com | STL JEWISH LIGHT WORLD NEWS February 24, 2021 | Page 7A Joe and Bibi talked, but what's it mean? Biden and Israel, the scorecard. BY RON KAMPEAS Four weeks into his presidency, Joe Biden spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the "scandal" over the new U.S. leader's failure to pick up the phone came to a quick and cheerful close.

The end of the "will he call? controver- Wednesday was evident in Netanyahu's grin in the photo his office sent to the media to announce the phone call, which lasted an hour. But the scrutiny of the Biden-Israel rela- tionship is just beginning. How the two sides summarized the call was evidence of where they stand on critical issues, includ- ing Iran and the peace process.

Netanyahu's summary spoke of peace in broad strokes. Biden mentioned the Palestinians, while Netanyahu did not. Netanyahu celebrated his long personal friendship with Biden. spoke of his longstanding friendship with Netanyahu said they chatted for an hour: Netanyahu attached a photograph to his President Joe Biden, speaking from the White House at a virtual event Feb.

19 hosted by the Munich Security Conference, said the U.S. and its allies must address Iran's destabilizing influence.

PHOTO: ANNA MONEYMAKER-POOL/GETTY IMAGES More subtly, the readouts, and a series of statements by top Biden officials, depict a tentativeness on all sides: Netanyahu seems eager to show that he is at ease with a Democratic president after being one of Donald Trump's most eager boosters for four years.

Biden seems intent on differen- tiating himself on Middle East policy not only from Trump but from his predeces- sor, Barack Obama, who Biden served as push for Israeli-Palestinian talks is remote.

Biden has stacked his team with Obama alumni, and privately they say they were burned by the two tailed peace pushes made by the former president, in 2009-10 and 2013-14, and aren't eager to play with Washington, D.C., as well as a discrete Jerusalem.

He also wants to restore U.S. assistance to the Palestinians through nongovernmental groups in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and through the Palestinian relief arm of the United Nations, UNRWA. Trump shut down all those areas of U.S.-Palestinian interaction.

The Abraham Accords: Yes please, but pass the carrots The Biden administration has embraced the pact, but has frozen some of the incen- tives Trump proffered to the Sunni Arab states, including the sale of stealth combat Notable, too, are the differences in tone, with Biden officials showing a greater will- ingness to adopt the language that pleases Netanyahu and the center-right pro-Israel community in the United States, including robust rejections of the boycott Israel There is agreement on advancing the normalization agreements that Trump bro- kered between Israel and four Sunni Arab states, the so-called Abraham Accords.

There are sharp differences, however, over whether and how the U.S. should rejoin the 2015 Iran nuclear deal that Netanyahu detested and Trump left in 2018. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, a dep- uty secretary of state and a deputy national security adviser under Obama, said the ini- tiative this time around has to come from the parties rather than Washington.

"We need to engage on that. But in the first instance, the parties in question need to Except when it comes to UNR- WA, Biden faces obstacles. A recent law forbids the PLO office from engage on that," Blinken said Feb. 8 on CNN, referring to the Israeli-Palestinian Authority drops its criminal complaints conflict.

"Look, the hard truth is we are a against Israelis in the International long way I think from seeing peace break Criminal Court. Reopening a dedicated out and seeing a final resolution of the prob- consulate to the Palestinians in Jerusalem lems between Israel and the Palestinians may face opposition from the Israeli gov- and the creation of a Palestinian state." ernment.

And in order to deliver assis- That won't stop Biden from reestablish- tance to the Palestinians, Biden must work ing relations with the Palestinians mostly around U.S. statutes that ban assistance to severed by the Trump administration, the P.A. as long as it compensates the fam- although there are logistical challenges. ilies of Palestinians who killed Israelis or Biden wants to reopen the Palestine Americans - what Israelis call "pay for Liberation Organization office in Warnings that such freezes would undercut the accords have not borne out: The UAE last week named its ambassador During the Obama years, Netanyahu and his backers in the United States want- ed not only to see robust assistance to Israel — which came, unstintingly, in gen- robust defenses of Israel.

Those at times were hard to come by. In 2011, for example, the then-ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, vetoed a resolution that would have condemned Israeli-Palestinian peace: Not now — who knows when? Biden has plenty on his plate, his defend- ers say, but even once he gets it clean, reviving Israeli-Palestinian peace talks is not likely to be a priority.

His team emphatically embraces the two-state outcome, whereas Trump and his Middle East team equivocated on whether their endgame included Palestinian statehood.

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"Joe and Bibi talked, but what's it mean? Biden and Israel, the scorecard.," St. Louis Jewish Light, 24 February 2021. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2021-010. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2021-010