Democratic Party presidential candidate Joe Biden made a statement recently that flew under the radar in the U.S. press, but made big waves in the Middle East. Biden said that though he was critical of Trump’s 2017 decision to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, he would not move it back to Tel Aviv as President. Biden said the embassy should never have been moved, “but now that it’s done, I would not move the embassy back to Tel Aviv.”
What a slap in the face to the Palestinian people! What hypocrisy! The Palestinian people were displaced from their homes in 1948 by violence so that the state of Israel could be built, and they have lived under military occupation since 1967 when Israel seized control of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and Jerusalem, incorporating half of that major Palestinian city into Israel. Trump’s move in 2017 was a way to support and strengthen Israel’s right-wing government, which has openly stated that Jerusalem will be the capital of Israel. This implies more displacement and dispossession of the Palestinians whose roots in that city stretch back for thousands of years.
Nothing could be more clear. As far as Palestine is concerned, Biden in the White House would continue the longstanding U.S. support for Israel in spite of its aggressive expropriation of Palestinian land. Between Trump and Biden there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference on this matter.
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