THE TRUMP administration was an utter catastrophe for those who care about justice and peace in Israel/Palestine. U.S. policy was entrusted to right-wing settlement supporters such as Ambassador David Friedman and Jared Kushner and Christian Zionists such as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
The administration applauded—and legalized—settlement expansion, showing utter disdain for international law. They displayed blatant antagonism to Palestinians by moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, cutting off financial aid to Palestinian hospitals and the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, and closing the Palestinian Liberation Organization office in Washington. They capped it all by promoting fake “peace” alternatives, such as Trump’s disastrous “Peace to Prosperity” plan and the normalization agreements with Gulf countries. These policies aimed to appease the most hard-right policies of Israel and the eschatological fantasies of evangelical Christian Zionists, rather than seeking genuine peace or justice.
The Biden administration is likely to reverse some of these extreme steps. Biden has already signaled, however, that he would not reverse the embassy move, nor support any measures for conditioning aid to Israel based on its behavior. Biden’s policy will likely be marked by a return to the traditional policies of the Obama era, which included anemic objections to renewed settlement expansion, verbal support for a two-state solution, and vague references to international law, while resisting any pressure on Israel to actually comply with international law or create a sovereign Palestinian state.
But even if Biden reversed all of Trump’s actions and returned to Obama’s positions, that would hardly advance peace and justice in that part of the world. New and bold initiatives are needed. They might not solve the problem entirely, but they can constitute real progress toward a just solution for Israel/Palestine and the region.
What are the courageous next steps? Biden can lay down the criteria for bringing Hamas into the peace process (as was done with the PLO). He can cease providing the diplomatic umbrella that protects Israel’s most blatant actions from the requirements of international law. He can use the considerable leverage of the U.S. to achieve concrete changes in the lives of people by demanding an end to the siege of Gaza, administrative detentions, midnight arrests of children, trials for children in military courts, house demolitions, and the use of torture and collective punishments against the Palestinian population. All these steps can be achieved without jeopardizing Israel’s security or prejudicing the ultimate outcome of any peace negotiations between the parties.
Ultimately, the Biden administration must either insist on respect for international law and genuine movement toward Palestinian statehood, or the U.S. must face the reality that a two-state solution is no longer possible and begin the process of addressing equality and genuine democracy in all of historic Palestine.
While it may be too much to expect any U.S. administration to act with fairness in this area, Christians who are concerned with justice, human rights, and the interests of both Israelis and Palestinians must start thinking in new terms.
It is time to envision a new reality beyond the two-state solution. With more than 700,000 Jewish settlers living as lords and masters in segregated communities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, a Palestinian Arab state in those areas may be impossible to implement. Perhaps the true interests of both Palestinians and Israeli Jews can be met in a unitary state in all of Palestine if both sides are willing or forced to abandon exclusivist terms that deny and demonize the other. Without claiming any symmetry between the two parties, theirs has been a zero-sum conflict. Both Zionism (calling for an exclusively Jewish state) and Palestinian Nationalism (calling for an Arab state) have failed to eliminate the other group or to meet the needs of their own people. To end the conflict, both movements must be called into question; both must be required to address the interests of the other.
This requires a radical prophetic position that may be too difficult for any administration, but certainly one that Christians attuned to justice can strive toward. Meanwhile, we can work for specific interim steps to alleviate suffering, avoid demonization, and end the practice of one-sided support to either party in this conflict.
Jonathan Kuttab, co-founder of Nonviolence International, is executive director of Friends of Sabeel North America, from which this is adapated.
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