Palestinians are eager to see U.S. President-elect Joe Biden take office in January, not for what he may do but what they hope he will undo. After four years in which outgoing President Donald Trump shut the Palestinian diplomatic mission in Washington, slashed hundreds of millions of dollars in annual aid to refugees, recognized a divided Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and told Israeli settlers that they deserve a third of the West Bank, expectations are low.
Forget about grand gestures like former President Barack Obama’s 2009 historic speech in Cairo to strike a “new beginning” with the Muslim world, which was followed by years of fruitlessly prodding Israelis and Palestinians to embrace a two-state solution. You won’t see Biden shuttling between Riyadh and Jerusalem as Trump did in 2017 to boast about his unique abilities to engineer an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.
