By Elliott Abrams
Thursday, July 14, 2022
President Biden issued what he and Israel’s prime
minister Yair Lapid are calling the “Jerusalem Declaration.” Is it of any
consequence?
Formally called the “Jerusalem U.S.-Israel Strategic Partnership Joint Declaration,”
a phrase no one will remember or repeat, the declaration can be sloughed off as
mere rhetoric. It is, after all, binding on neither party and can be forgotten
as soon as Prime Minister Lapid or Joe Biden leaves office. In Lapid’s case,
that could be just a few months away. Barack Obama contemptuously dismissed the
pledges made in a letter by President George W. Bush in 2004 to then–prime
minister Ariel Sharon — even after large majorities in both houses of Congress
had affirmed those pledges. This reveals what words are sometimes worth — even
a president’s words.
And much of what is in this declaration is boilerplate,
repeated time after time in joint statements by the United States and Israel.
We have unbreakable bonds, shared values, etc., and the United States is
committed to Israel’s security, its “qualitative military edge” over all
enemies, and its ability to “defend itself by itself.” Nothing new here. It
isn’t even novel for a president to say Iran must not get a nuclear weapon: The
last five presidents have said that.
Yet this declaration does matter.
First, as president, Joe Biden had only once,
offhandedly, said Iran would not be permitted to get a nuclear weapon “on my
watch.” This was a far cry from more specific commitments made by his
predecessors, including Barack Obama in 2012. Biden has only now, in the
declaration, said something specific and earnest:
The United States stresses that
integral to this pledge [to preserve and strengthen Israel’s capability to
deter its enemies and to defend itself by itself against any threat or combination
of threats] is the commitment never to allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon,
and that it is prepared to use all elements of its national power to ensure
that outcome.
Though not using the words “force” or “military force”
(whose use would have made this declaration stronger), Biden has taken a
significant step forward. Previously, the administration had spoken of using
only diplomatic and economic pressure on Iran, so “all elements of national
power” is a more substantial threat.
And in an interview with Israel’s Channel 12, when Biden was asked
whether he would use force to stop Iran from getting nukes, he replied, “If that
was the last resort, yes.”
The dissonance between Biden’s new, more rigid line and
his endless, fruitless nuclear negotiations with Iran is evident; equally
evident are the likely future gaps between the United States and Israel about
when Iranian nuclear advances mean the time for that “last resort” has actually
been reached. Nevertheless, traveling to Israel has forced Joe Biden to
confront the Iranian nuclear weapons issue as he had never done before.
Biden also fully embraces in this declaration the
“Abraham Accords” — an agreement between Israel and various Arab states
negotiated by the Trump administration. Initially, Biden was cool to this Trump
achievement. But in this declaration, he is entirely committed: The Accords
“are important to the future of the Middle East region and to the cause of
regional security, prosperity, and peace.”
Second, Biden’s repetition of pledges to Israel that
previous presidents have made is consequential because it is 2022, and the
Democratic Party is drifting into an anti-Israel position. The most recent Pew poll finds that while Republicans view Israel more
favorably than they view Palestinians by a two-to-one margin, Democrats view
Palestinians slightly more favorably — and this is just one in a series of
polls going back years and tracing the evolution of Democrats away from support
for Israel. There is now a group of Democrats in the House of Representatives
whose hostility to Israel is displayed frequently in votes and speeches.
In that context, Biden’s adherence to the “old religion,”
the support for Israel that used to characterize Democrats when he was a
younger man, is a valuable antidote to recent trends. From the viewpoint of
Israel and its supporters, there is some utility in having a Democratic
president who is 79 years old and knew Golda Meir and Yitzhak Rabin. Still, how
powerful that antidote proves is simply unknowable — as is Biden’s ability to
affect the views of Democratic voters, especially younger ones, about
U.S.–Israeli relations.
Biden will be in office next year when Israel celebrates
its 75th anniversary. He can proudly tell the story of how his Democrat
predecessor, Harry Truman, recognized the infant state within minutes of its
declaration of independence.
Whether this “Jerusalem Declaration” will eventually be seen as just one in a series of such collegial U.S.–Israel statements or as an anachronism reflecting an aged president who no longer represented the views of his party will be clear only long after Biden has passed from the scene.
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