My fears about the US Presidential Election: What would a Biden-Harris Administration do in its waning days if defeated by Trump, or as a victory message should Harris win? Opinion.
Barry Shaw | Oct 20, 2024
Obama and BidenOfficial White House Photo by Pete Souza.
My strategic affairs antennas are predicting an awful and damaging outcome for Israel whatever the result of the US Presidential Election.
I predict that if Trump wins, the Biden-Harris Administration will use its waning days, between November through to February, to inflict serious diplomatic damage and an Obama-style punishment on Israel for not kowtowing to US demands over Gaza, Hamas, Hezbollah and Lebanon. If Harris wins, that is how the entire term will look.
Throughout 2024, the Biden-Harris Administration took one-sided swipes at Israel.
Over Gaza, they consistently hampered Israel’s efforts to defeat Hamas to the point of placing essential weapons restrictions on Israel.
The media was full of recriminating conversations between Biden and Bibi while Harris was sniping from the sidelines and did not attend Netanyahu’s 25 July address to Congress.
Their subsequent meeting was anything but warm.
Notoriously, the Biden-Harris White House has issued punishing Executive Orders against individual Jews living in Judea & Samaria with bloated and downright false charges of violence against these individuals.
Their hypocrisy is mirrored in the fact they never applied Executive Sanctions, nor the Taylor Force Act, against hundreds of Palestinian Arabs, individually or collectively, for the incessant murder of thousands of Israelis in almost daily terror attacks in Judea & Samaria.
Nor did they impose Executive Sanctions against the Palestinian Authority and Mahmoud Abbas for their incentive payments to Palestinian Arabs to kill Israelis known as their “Pay to Slay” policy.
Not only have they never imposed such Sanctions, on the contrary, Biden-Harris pumps money into the PA system that helps fund their reward payments, this despite the Taylor-Force Act.
The contrasting approach to Israel and the Palestinian Arabs has also been seen in the Biden-Harris arms embargo on Israel for not complying with their surrender to Hamas demands while persistently threatening to accept the adoption of Palestinian Arab statehood, totally ignoring the fact that Hamas would sweep into power in Ramallah given an election. This according to several Palestinian Arab polls and surveys.
Is this truly what a Biden-Harris Administration would do in its waning days if defeated by Trump, or as a victory message should Harris win?
The answer is yes if they follow the behavior of the Obama-Biden playbook in the transition period between Obama and Trump.
Immediately after the 2016 Trump election, Obama recruited Biden and rushed to the UN Security Council to wipe out in international armistice agreement between Israel and Jordan, and redefine what had been agreed and designated as Area C in the Oslo Accords, signed in 1993, in which Israel would retain total control of designated territory until such time as the Palestinian Authority proved itself willing and able to accept the existence of Israel as a legitimate neighbor.
Despite the fact that until today the PA singularly rejects recognition of Israel as a state and a neighbor, Obama-Biden actively pulled in the votes to ram through UNSC Resolution 2334 which flew in the face of a prior internationally recognized armistice agreement of 1949 between Israel and Jordan in which territories in what is known as the ‘West Bank’ including east Jerusalem were part of Israel.
Due to 2334, they became known as “illegally occupied” by Israel in an act of spite by a defeated Obama ably assisted by Biden.
My awful premonition is that, win or lose, the Biden-Harris Administration will execute another major spiteful diplomatic hit on Israel between November and February, for not kowtowing to their demands and display weakness to Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran.
I predict that they will lobby and ensure the approval of a willing United Nations to recognize the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state and assist in rushing it through the UN legislative process into the Security Council before the inauguration of whichever president wins.
I hope I am wrong, but my gut feeling tells me that Israel is about to suffer the wrath of a Biden-Harris transition before it becomes whatever the American electorate decides on 5 November.
Beware of a victorious Democrat Administration, but also –
Beware of a scorned Democrat Administration.
Barry Shaw is at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.
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