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Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Takes Back Seat on Biden's Mideast Trip
(Newsweek) Daniel Bush - Promises to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have bedeviled many recent U.S. presidents. On his first trip to the Middle East since taking office, President Joe Biden has made clear he is not planning to repeat the same mistake. "When Biden talks about Israel, his focus is not on Israel's relationship to the Palestinians, it's about Iran" and other issues, said Shadi Hamid, a senior fellow at the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings. "Palestinians are an afterthought in the region." "The Israeli-Palestinian conflict sort of gets left behind in that broader message, not in a sense that it's ignored, but it falls further down the list of priorities," said Lucy Kurtzer-Ellenbogen, director of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Program at the U.S. Institute for Peace. The Palestinian Authority hoped Biden would reopen the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem, closed in 2018, that had provided diplomatic and humanitarian services to the Palestinians. More importantly, it symbolized America's recognition of Palestinian claims to eastern Jerusalem. But the plan to reopen the consulate appears to have stalled. The move is opposed by Israel, which views Jerusalem as its capital, and the Biden administration has said it can't reopen the consulate unless Israel signs off on the plan. "They don't want to wade into those waters. They view it as too much of a headache," said a person familiar with the matter. Senior White House officials "learned their lesson from the Obama administration in terms of losing political capital [on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict], and they want to invest their political capital elsewhere."