Biden calls out Israel to work towards two-state solution

Leading Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden says that he will “resume” America’s financial assistance to the Palestinian Authority and that Israeli leaders need to recognise the Palestinians’ quest for statehood.

Biden made his comments in response to questions from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. He included his belief that, “No nation, including Israel, is immune from legitimate criticism.”

The veteran Biden advocated the two-state solution as “the only path to long-term security for Israel, while sustaining its identity as a Jewish and democratic state.

It is also the only way to ensure Palestinian dignity and their legitimate interest in national self-determination.” To this end, he explained, he intends to “restore credible engagement with both sides to the conflict.”

While “America must sustain its ironclad commitment to Israel’s security,” he explained, “…it is also essential to resume assistance to the Palestinian Authority that supports Israeli-Palestinian security cooperation, people-to-people programmes, economic development and humanitarian aid and health care for the Palestinian people.”

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Biden has criticised the Trump administration for ending US donations to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in 2018.

This, he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, is a challenge for anyone seeking to get Israeli and Palestinian leaders together. “At present, neither the Israeli nor Palestinian leadership seems willing to take the political risks necessary to make progress through direct negotiations.

This challenge has been made even more difficult by President Trump’s unilateralism, his moves to cut off assistance to the Palestinians and his equivocation on the importance of a two-state solution.” [Links added.]

Only last month, the former vice president in the Obama era warned that Trump’s stay in power will have a negative effect on American identity.

Biden and a Democrat rival for the nomination, Senator Bernie Sanders, support a “two-state solution” for Israel and the Palestinians, and both men have criticised political leaders on each side of the long-standing conflict.

However, Biden has described Sanders’ proposal to withhold US military aid from Israel if the government in Tel Aviv doesn’t moderate its treatment of Palestinians as “bizarre” and reaffirmed a financial commitment to Israel regardless of its actions in the occupied Palestinian territories.

While Biden has called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s actions regarding the Palestinians “counterproductive” and referred to him as “extreme right”, he accused Palestinian leaders of “fomenting” the conflict and “baiting everyone who is Jewish”.

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He has also suggested that some on the US political left give the PA “a pass” when criticising the Israeli leadership.

The 2020 hopeful insisted that, “Palestinian leaders should end any incitement and glorification of violence, and they must level with their people about the legitimacy and permanence of Israel as a Jewish state in the historic homeland of the Jewish people.

Israeli leaders, meanwhile, should stop the expansion of West Bank settlements and talk of annexation that would make two states impossible to achieve.”

Together, said Biden, Palestinian and Israeli leaders “should work to provide more relief to the people of Gaza while working to weaken, and ultimately replace, Hamas. And Arab states should take more steps toward normalisation with Israel and increase their financial and diplomatic support for building Palestinian institutions.”

Biden has been highlighting his foreign policy credentials in the campaign to win the Democratic Party presidential nomination. The US goes to the polls to elect the president later this year. Incumbent Donald Trump is expected to stand for a second term in the White House.