The results of the US election 2020 bring hopes of peace in the Middle East.
Palestinians take a sigh of relief as Trump is defeated in the US elections. Since the announcement of the result of the US 2020 election and the winning of Biden, most Palestinians have heaved a sigh of relief. They don’t feel satisfied because of Biden’s win. Rather, it’s because Trump is leaving. For Palestinians, the US administration has proved through its actions its extreme bias in favor of Israel. The 4 years of The Trump administration were the worst ever for Palestinians and the Palestinian cause. As several decisions were made that ended the peace process and the two state solution. And which discarded decades of international consensus on the Palestine Question. As a result some Palestinians see an ever-darkening future because they believe that all those who come to power in US have the same policy against Palestinians.
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The Trump administration targeted the Palestinian cause. During his administration, Trump crossed many red lines intending to eliminate the Palestinian cause altogether. According to analysts, the past four years have done such strategic damage to the cause that it will be difficult to repair it.
For the Israeli prime minster, Netanyahu, Trump’s administration was a golden chance to achieve key Israeli goals and implement his obsession; on December 6, 2017, Trump officially announced that his administration recognized occupied Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. In May 2018, he moved the Washington embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. As a result , the Palestinian Authority announced it would cutoff its contact with the Trump administration, a boycott continued until today.
Economic Restrictions on Palestine
On the level of economic restrictions, Washington began, on January 16 2018, to reduce its aid to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). Then, on August 3, 2018, it decided to cut all aid. Since then, UNRWA has been suffering from a severe financial crisis, which has affected the provision of aid to the Palestinians. On August 2, 2018, the Palestinian Authority announced that the US administration had stopped all aid to the Palestinians, including direct and indirect aid to the treasury. Later, on September 10, 2018, the US administration closed the PLO office in Washington and its bank accounts, and days later it expelled the Palestinian ambassador.
In January 2020, Trump announced the “Deal of the Century”, actually a plan to liquidate the Palestinian issue once and for all. This completely ignores Palestinian national rights, and calls for the establishment of self-rule, under the name of a so-called ‘state’ , over residential areas that are not geographically connected, and which exclude Israeli settlements. On October 29, 2020, Washington allowed Americans born in Jerusalem to register Israel as a place of birth, a move that the Palestinians see as a confirmation of the United States’ recognition of Jerusalem as the alleged capital of the occupation state.
Trump also supported Arab normalization with Israel, before resolving the Palestinian issue and ending the Israeli occupation. Palestinians condemn the recent normalization agreements, and considered them to be an attempt to destroy the Arab and Islamic incubator for the Palestinian people, and an attempt to pressurize Palestinians into forfeiting their national rights.
Palestinian leadership reaction to Biden’s win
The Palestinian Authority has congratulated the US President-elect Joe Biden on his win and inform him that they are willing to resume US-brokered peace talks with Israel from the point at which they broke off in 2016, anchored in the two-state solution. Meanwhile, the Islamic resistance movement Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in a statement has called on US President-elect Joe Biden to pull back outgoing President Donald Trump’s so-called “deal of the century” He also asked the Biden administration to abolish the US recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and the embassy move to Jerusalem. Several Palestinian factions also urged Biden to correct the US unfair policies towards Palestinian people which made the US a partner to Israel in oppression and aggression.
Israeli reaction to Biden’s win
Despite all the advantages that Trump presented to the occupation state, thousands of Israelis celebrated Biden’s victory over his Republican rival, Trump. The Jerusalem Post reported on its website that thousands of demonstrators against Netanyahu in occupied Jerusalem celebrated Biden’s victory, and held up banners which read “it is your turn to leave now” in reference to Netanyahu. Trump is one of Netanyahu’s most important allies, and he helped him a lot in overcoming his internal crises that almost toppled him in recent months. The “Black Banners” movement, which organizes the demonstrations against Netanyahu, said in a statement that the United States managed to “get rid of Trump, and now Israel must do the same with Netanyahu.” “Israel must also acquire a new leadership that works for the citizens, not against them,” it added.
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