The US President, Joe Biden’s political future, hangs in the balance. Even though his physicians recently declared him fit, his supporters don’t see him fit enough. A recent poll done in the US shows that a majority of the people who voted for Biden in 2020 now believe that he is too old to be an effective president. This means that many of his voters are already in the advanced stages of thinking about shifting their voters towards Trump. But Biden’s age is not only the source of his worry. In addition, Trump’s resurgent politics and the Biden administration’s failures in the past 3 years or so are also to be blamed for why he is already trailing Trump in seven key swing states. One of the key reasons contributing to the ongoing decline in Biden’s popularity – which has already become a major difference between the 2020 and the 2024 elections – is his administration’s utter failure on two foreign policy fronts. It has failed to push Russia back, let alone defeat it, in Ukraine. Secondly, it has failed to bring Israel’s genocidal war to an end. The latter is really causing the heaviest toll.
In the past month, the Biden administration has tried to center-stage itself in the politics of mediating a resolution of the war in Palestine by salvaging a plan out of the recent past, i.e., to offer Saudi Arabia a defence treaty in exchange for Riyadh’s recognition of Israel, with Israel expected to accept a two-state solution in exchange for normalization with Saudia. More than anything else, Joe Biden, the allegedly ailing and surely ageing president, sees in this solution an opportunity to pull off a deal that might help him recover his falling reputation. Basically, the deal aims to take Middle Eastern politics back to where it was before the 7th of October. It aims to expand the scope of the Abraham Accords by including Saudi Arabia. A major difference from the pre-October 7 position, however, is the emphasis the new deal places on the two-state solution. But will this bid succeed is a moot question, as it is yet to find any enthusiastic buyers.
But, while Biden has his own imperatives, he does not have any powerful leverage that he can pull to convince Israel’s Netanyahu of this deal. Netanyahu, on the other hand, has reiterated several times that Israel would not support Palestinian statehood.
But the reason why Saudi Arabia and Washington seem eager to push for this plan is that if Saudi Arabia can salvage the Palestine state, it will boost Riyadh’s overall influence in the Middle East. Riyadh’s peace deal will outmanoeuvre Qatar, for instance, which has been trying to help mediate a deal between Hamas and Israel. For Washington, whereas this deal will help Biden’s re-election bid, it will also help it bring the Saudis back in the US axis, allowing the former to ultimately ‘contain’ China and better control the oil market in a way that OPEC+ will become irrelevant. Ever since the start of the Russia-Ukraine military conflict in February 2022, Washington has been trying to convince the Saudis to break out of the OPEC+ deal with Russia to increase oil production and lower oil prices. Washington has not been able to do that. But Washington calculates that if it can enter into a strategic treaty with Saudi Arabia, this will be too big for Riyadh to just pass in exchange for its agreement to leave OPEC+.
This calculation notwithstanding, there is no guarantee that Israel will accept it. When Israel signed The Abraham Accords, it did not have to offer any concessions to the UAE and other signatories. With Israel now indiscriminately killing everyone in Palestine and “winning” the war, there is no need for it to accept the US deal.
The question, then, is: Can Biden convince, let alone force, Israel? If the past is any guide, the Biden administration has thus far failed to even convince Israelis to exercise restraint and do a proportional offensive. The more than 30,000 dead Palestinians show a striking US failure. Despite US warnings – and even occasional criticism of Israel – the latter has refused to budge. Israel went ahead with its offensive in Rafah despite US warnings not to do so.
What can Biden do to change this situation? Perhaps, kill all support to Israel. But this is a policy change that Biden finds too costly to follow. In fact, killing, or even threatening to kill, military aid for Israel will exacerbate Biden’s political fortunes. In the 2020 elections, 68 percent of American Jews voted for Biden. So far, Biden’s unwavering military support for Israel has kept the Jewish support and vote alive. But any shift in this policy can cost Biden votes, which will add American Jews to the growing list of people who voted for him in 2020 but will not vote for him in 2024. But, if Biden cannot take such steps, his continued support for Israel in the coming months will continue to alienate his non-Jewish American voters.
Biden is, therefore, in a fix – indeed, between the devil and the deep sea. But the devil and the deep are both the creation of US policymakers themselves. A saner way out of this quagmire would be to, first and foremost, have this realization. Better policy steps will follow.
Salman Rafi Sheikh, research-analyst of International Relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”