If Democrat Joe Biden wins the election, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will walk back promises to hold elections for the first time in 14 years, a former PA advisor said.
A Biden victory would also see the Palestinians lobby Washington to reopen a diplomatic Palestinian mission after the State Department ordered its shuttering in 2018. Abbas will also bid for the restoration of aid, which was cut over the Palestinians’ policy of paying salaries to terrorists and their families, as well as the reopening of a separate U.S. consulate in eastern Jerusalem.
“Should Biden win, Abbas would likely drop any pretense of elections, regional realignment, and so on and immediately move to reengage with the U.S.,” said Washington Institute senior fellow and former PA advisor Ghaith al-Omari.
Abbas was elected for a four-year term in 2005 but has remained in office ever since and despite several promises to do so over the years, has never called elections.
Abbas may, however, end up disappointed, because according to analysts the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is unlikely to be a high priority for the U.S. going forward.
“Israel and Palestine are not going to be a priority for any new administration. Not because Biden doesn’t care — but he’s in the middle of a pandemic and global economic crisis. There is a huge range of issues – the restoration of democracy, institutions, health care…I’m not sure how much bandwidth that will leave for Israel-Palestine,” Shibley Telhami, a senior fellow of the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, was quoted by the Times of Israel as saying.
Contrary to Abbas, elsewhere in the Middle East Arabs are hoping for a Trump victory.
The lead editorial of the UAE’s The National posited that in the Middle East “Trump’s record is broadly positive.”
His determination to stand up to the menace of Tehran has been commendable. He helped to negotiate the Abraham Accord with the UAE and Israel – potentially a seismic turning-point in the region’s history. ISIS has been tamed, if not yet put down. Sudan has been brought back into the international fold.
True, war continues to rage in Syria and Iraq struggles to rid itself of Iranian influence. The recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital was inflammatory. But given that this was a President elected on the self-styled promise of ‘America First’, the isolationism that many feared would leave the Middle East abandoned has not materialized.
Days before the election, Bahraini and UAE officials called on moderate American Muslims to cast their votes for Trump, warning that a Biden win could stop further peace deals in the region.
A Bahraini official told Hebrew-language daily Israel Hayom that a Trump victory would generate a “flood of moderate Arab and Muslim countries” into signing normalization deals.
He warned, however, that while a Biden victory would not endanger the newly ratified deals with the UAE and Bahrain, it may prevent further deals from happening.
“A Biden victory will see many of the countries that are currently exploring the possibility of normalizing relations [with Israel] take a step back and revisit the risk they are taking.”
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