Gaza, Beirut, Trump, and Harris

Amitava Mukherjee

(The author is a senior journalist and commentator)

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, has lambasted Emanuel Macron, the President of France, for the latter’s call for an arms embargo on Israel. Bibi, as Netanyahu is popularly called, thinks that Israel will win ‘with or without support.” This statement is significant. Bibi thinks that he can show audacity as he can easily pressurize the Western bloc, particularly its leader, the US, to fall in line. For America, this may have political repercussions in its election year. The US presidential election is just a month away, and the complex Israel-America relations may have serious effects on its results with Arab-Americans, largely known to be supporters of the Democratic Party, veering away from Kamala Harris.

Which way their support will go is difficult to predict. It is unlikely that they would vote for Donald Trump, who is a self-declared supporter of Israel. The possibility is that the Arab Americans may choose any third candidate, and that would harm Harris most.

This is simply because Kamala Harris has not been able to present any meaningful plan for ending the war in the Middle East and is still a prisoner of the Biden era Democratic Party foreign policy, which suffers from confusion and helplessness in the face of the intransigence shown by Benjamin Netanyahu. Harris’s game plan is delectably vague—to work to “end this war such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination.”.

Has it any difference with the traditional US policy vis-à-vis Israel? There may be some differences between what the Democratic Party preaches about US-Israel relations and what the Republicans say about it, but essentially it is a difference in degree. On the whole, it matters little who will win the presidential race—the Democrats or the Republicans. The policy will remain the same: Israel has the right to defend itself; it could rely upon flows of US weapons and money to strike any target whenever a situation arises, and all help would be extended to protect the Israeli economy.

So this has made the situation for Kamala Harris pretty tough, as the presidential race is now almost even, although Harris has made up some lost ground. But among the Arab-Americans, an “Abandon Harris” movement is now growing, which had previously the nomenclature “Abandon Biden.” It is because of the fact that, as the Arab-American population thinks, Netanyahu is manipulating the US administration at will even as the US administration of the Biden-Harris combination is periodically giving out its pious intention of a ceasefire in Gaza. In July last year, the US-brokered initiative showed a real chance of success, but right at that time, Ismail Haniyeh, the pragmatic political leader of Hamas, was assassinated in Tehran. Then a second chance of a ceasefire appeared last month. But then Netanyahu came up with some last-minute demands that called for barring armed men from returning to Northern Gaza during the eventual ceasefire and that Israel must retain control of the Philadelphi corridor, a narrow band of land that separates Gaza from Egypt. Then another bloody chapter opened—the Lebanon war.

The apprehension uppermost in the minds of most Arab population in the US, and among a large population in the word also, is that Netanyahu is deliberately stymieing peace initiatives as he is looking for a Trump victory in the US president election and the Biden-Harris administration is nothing but a helpless onlooker to it. Their helplessness is palpable and understandable, as they cannot deny the centrality of the existence of Israel in US foreign policy. That is why the US talks of a ceasefire but at the same time sells USD 20 billion worth of fighter jets and other weaponry, including missiles, to Israel in recent months.

Would this record of the Democratic Party go against Kamala Harris or would it help Donald Trump? In recent times, plenty of polls have taken place in the US on the Middle East crisis and its likely impact on the US election. Fifty-five percent of all Americans believe the US government’s foreign policy is on the wrong track, and 91 percent of Muslim voters in’swing’ states say that they are more likely to go out to vote only if there is a ceasefire. There is an interesting statistical figure having a bearing on this point. 80 percent of the Arab Americans surveyed have poured anger on the Biden administration for failing to impose a ceasefire in Gaza, while only 55 percent of them have said that they dislike Trump.

So the Biden administration is looked upon with disfavour among the Arab Americans in particular and the Muslim voters in general. But it is a fact that 70 percent of the Jews have identified themselves as Democrats, and 72 percent of them have said that they would vote for Harris. The Jews constitute a significant proportion of the population in’swing’ states like Pennsylvania and Michigan. But Arab Americans are also present not only in these two states in large numbers but in other ‘swing’ states like Wisconsin, Arizona, Minnesota, Georgia, and Florida. In 2020 election 64 percent of Arab Americans supported the Democratic Party nationally and in Michigan it reached up to 70 percent. But in a poll conducted in August this year it was found that only 12 percent Muslim voters support Kamala Harris in Michigan.

If this trend is replicated in other’swing’ states, then the result of the election will be more unpredictable. This is what Netanyahu would like to see. There are indications that after Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, Netanyahu’s political stock is bouncing back in his own country, which had previously suffered terribly due to charges of bribery and fraud. As he orders more and more attacks on Lebanon and perhaps against Iran at a later time, a large section of American Jews, traditionally Democratic Party supporters, may veer towards Trump, who is known to enjoy a cosy relationship with Netanyahu. Perhaps this is what Bibi is aiming for. The Isreali Prime Minister once boasted that he had persuaded Donald Trump to back out of the US-Iran nuclear agreement.

Netanyahu’s approach signals a new and rising Israeli thinking—that it is now competent enough to defend itself having a large military-industrial infrastructure at its disposal and therefore needs no outside help. This may not be a pragmatic assessment on the part of Tel Aviv but portends a new scenario in the Middle East where US influence may start shrinking. In that case, the void will be filled up by Russia and China, giving an unexpected twist to the geopolitical chessboard.