Washington

- The recent developments related to the Palestinian cause - especially with regard to the fall of an increasing number of Palestinian martyrs - and the arrival of the most extremist government in Israel's history to power, and the subsequent visits of senior US officials to the region;

To ask an important question related to the nature of US President Joe Biden's strategy towards the Palestinians.

"If President Joe Biden has a strategy toward the Palestinians, I can't know it or define it, and what I can say is that he's just trying to delay making difficult decisions in the hope that there will be a political change on the Israeli side or on the Palestinian side, and hopefully there will be a change on both. I generally suspect that the passage of time works in Biden's favour."

With these words, Ambassador David Mack, the former Assistant Secretary of State for Middle East Affairs and currently an expert at the Atlantic Council, began his speech to Al-Jazeera Net about revealing Biden's account towards the Palestinians.

Blinken (left) reiterated, during his meeting with Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinians and Israel's call to take steps to reduce the intensity of escalation (French)

Chinese threats and energy prices

Since Biden came to power in January 2021, US diplomacy has been more preoccupied with Chinese threats, and even in the Middle East, Biden and his team focused on the Iranian nuclear file, and support for the "Abrahamic Accords" initiated by the administration of his predecessor, Donald Trump.

And following the invasion of Ukraine about a year ago, the Palestinian issue witnessed a further decline, and the issue of energy prices emerged among the priorities of the US administration's policy in the region, before it returned to the forefront of its concerns following the Israeli aggression on Gaza in May 2021. Despite Biden's pledge at the beginning of his rule to restore The guiding principles that have guided American diplomacy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including support for a two-state solution and opposition to Israeli annexation and settlement building;

He did not back down from his predecessor Trump's unilateral decisions that only served Israel's interests.

Biden refused to amend or change Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the unified capital of Israel, and decided to maintain the decision to move his country's embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Biden also succumbed to Israeli government pressure and refused to reopen his country's consulate in East Jerusalem for fear of angering Israel, despite his claim that he still aims to reopen it.

Aaron David Miller, a former US official on the Middle East peace process, believes that Biden is very busy, and that confronting Israel requires time and presidential energy, which the US president does not currently have, as he faces thorny foreign policy files that lack quick or easy solutions.

Miller stressed that the most important foreign policy priorities of the US administration now are the Russian war on Ukraine and how to deal with China and the nuclear threats from both North Korea and Iran, and therefore the best that Biden can hope to achieve is to prevent the eruption of tensions between the Israelis and the Palestinians, which did not happen.

Important visits without results

And a series of high-level US visits last January to Palestine and Israel ended without any progress being made or any breakthrough bringing the new Israeli government closer to the Palestinian Authority.

Washington feels very pessimistic about the course of violence in the region, which was multiplied even by the arrival of the most extreme right-wing government in Israel's history.

The US visits - which brought National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, Director of Central Intelligence William Burns, and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to the region - did not succeed in calming the situation or reducing the violence that culminated two days before Blinken's arrival with an Israeli attack inside the Jenin camp, which resulted in the death of 11 A Palestinian, followed by an attack by a Palestinian youth in Jerusalem, which resulted in the killing of 7 Israelis.

And after the year 2022 recorded records in the number of Palestinian martyrs, with more than 200 martyrs, and 30 Israelis were killed;

January 2023 exceeded all previous months, when 30 Palestinians were killed and 7 Israelis were killed, which causes great disturbance to the White House.

Washington's focus has become focused on pushing the Palestinians to re-engage in security coordination with Israel after the Palestinian Authority suspended it after the largest Israeli forces stormed the Jenin camp.

In an interview with Al-Jazeera Net, Gregory Avtandelian, a former official in the US State Department and in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and currently a lecturer at the American University, indicated;

That Washington's general calls for calm and continued security cooperation are of no great importance;

It is not clear what tools the administration has to actually achieve this on the ground, and it is clear that Washington wants to control the violence and not escalate it, and stop any new provocative steps, such as the desire of the far-right Itamar Ben Gvir to storm Al-Aqsa Mosque again.


No peace, no stability

Ambassador David Mac believes that what Yaiden is doing is an attempt to "buy time by sending senior officials and other high-ranking aides to the region to talk to both Israeli and Palestinian leaders, to bridge the gap between them, but this will not reduce the central existential dilemma, without a peace process." If there is a credible two-state solution, Israelis and Palestinians will remain locked in a cycle of mutual violence that only strengthens extremists on both sides.

Mack added, "With all of the above and for domestic political reasons, the Biden administration cannot ignore the Israeli-Palestinian peace issue, despite the extremist Israeli coalition and the lack of a unified governing authority on the Palestinian side. At the same time, the political cost of failing to make constructive progress between Israel and Palestine is It will ultimately outweigh any imaginable gains from ignoring this issue and keeping it on the back of Biden's Middle East concerns; time is not on the side of the Israelis, the Palestinians, or the Biden administration.