These are dark times for anyone with a modicum of sympathy for the Palestinian people, who are facing another national catastrophe, comparable to the Nakba of 1948.
The discouragement is completely deserved. Victims of Israel’s war in Gaza, which many experts consider genocidal, the Palestinians find themselves facing the region’s most powerful army, which also benefits from billions of dollars in military aid and diplomatic carte blanche. from the most powerful country in the world.
True to form, Washington has repeatedly blocked international efforts to impose an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza. Worse still, there appears to be little recourse to the Palestinians’ main demand for self-determination.
There is, however, a glimmer of hope. Recent political events in the United States offer a glimpse of a potential path to better times for the Palestinian people. Certainly, this is not a likely path, or even probable. Many things need to go in the right direction, including the Democratic Party replacing its current sclerotic leadership.
But thanks to Michigan, the route does exist, and it is now reasonable to assume that the route to East Jerusalem could pass through Dearborn.
Domestic politics in the United States
Whatever form Palestinian self-determination takes, it is certain that it cannot be achieved without the buy-in of key global and regional actors.
Although much has been written about the decline of American power and the return of multipolarity, the reality is that the United States remains the hegemon in the region – and indeed the rest of the world.
In this sense, waiting impatiently for the rise of China or another superpower to result in a decisive breakthrough on the Palestinian question is a strategy doomed to failure. The focus must be on changing the direction of American policy, not on the loss of American power.
More to the point, the best bet for the Palestinian cause is for it to become a major goal of the US president’s foreign policy. So how do pro-Palestinian activists go about making this a reality?
Fundamental demographic and political factors place the Republican Party in a bind. Neoconservatism, an ideology that still occupies the center of gravity among right-wing foreign policy elites in the United States, although less so than 20 years ago, views Israel as an indispensable ally, often elevating Israeli interests over rank with those of the United States.
Moreover, at the voter level, evangelical Christians make up one of the Republican Party’s strongest constituencies – and among Israel’s strongest supporters. Finally, white and older voters are overwhelmingly Republican, while the Palestinians’ biggest supporters are young people and people of color. Put it all together, and you get some unsurprising results, like a recent poll finding that among Republicans, 56 percent favor taking Israel, compared to just 2 percent favoring the Palestinians.
In this context, Democrats remain the only hope for the Palestinian cause, despite President Joe Biden’s wholehearted support for Israel’s program of ethnic cleansing and mass atrocities in Gaza.
The only pro-Palestinian voices in the US Congress and other institutions come from the Democratic Party, such as Representative Rashida Tlaib. Even those who express milquetoast bilateralism, like Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Bernie Sanders, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, are part of a political breed whose presence would be unimaginable within the Republican Party.
To be clear, I am not claiming that the Democratic Party is a likely savior of the Palestinian people. However, it is more likely to lead to a change in American policy towards Israel than the alternative.
Michigan’s importance to the Middle East
And that’s where Michigan comes in. Serendipitously, there is a high concentration of Arabs and Muslims in a state that is extremely important for presidential elections. Michigan is one of the last remaining bricks of the Midwest’s old “blue wall.”
In the current configuration of American politics, it is essentially impossible for a Democrat to win the presidency without Michigan’s 15 Electoral College votes.
This is why the results of the recent primary should send shudders through the entire Biden 2024 campaign. Usually, when incumbents are in the running, primaries are not just a formality but a coronation. In this context, the fact that 13.3% of Democrats (or more than 100,000 people) in Michigan vote “no commitment” is worrying.
Although its success was considerably more tepid in other states during the March 5 primaries (also known as Super Tuesday) – partly because of a lack of organizational and institutional support, and partly because of differences in density of Muslim and Arab population – the support of “An uncommitted project need not be broad as long as it is deep. If the grudges among pro-Palestinian Michiganders carry over into November, it portends total disaster for Biden’s re-election plans.
The sad truth is that in American democracy, parties and politicians will ignore voters’ demands unless they can credibly threaten to make them lose an election. Until now, it has been easy for Biden and mainstream Democrats to ignore Arab and Muslim opinion on Palestine. What will they do – we thought – vote for Donald Trump?
But today, threats from Muslim, Arab and young voters to stay home this fall are much more credible and less likely to be dismissed as mere talk or false bravado. Simply put, they showed they mean business.
The path to follow
Ideally, Biden would get the message and radically change course. In the short term, this would involve conditioning U.S. military, economic, and diplomatic assistance to Israel on respect for basic human rights and international law, while providing a viable path to a medium-term settlement of the Palestinian question.
But in reality, for someone with a record as deeply pro-Israel as Biden’s, such a radical change in the twilight of his career is unlikely. Indeed, it is unlikely that an octogenarian can change the worldview that has underpinned his foreign policy thinking, as senator, vice president and now president, for half a century.
As things stand, the most likely outcome therefore seems to be Biden falling into defeat in November, largely due to the consequences of high inflation in 2021-2023, but also the large-scale abandonment of young voters and significant pockets of support. , including the Arab and Muslim vote, which helped secure his victory in 2020.
If this is indeed the case, then Muslims and Arabs hope that this defeat will convey the importance of the Palestinian issue to the Democratic Party elite and that in the future those vying for party leadership (and of the country) will understand that they can no longer marginalize the Palestinian cause.
Trump’s counterargument
A common counterargument to this logic from Biden supporters is that doing anything to help elect Trump is contrary to Palestinian interests. Trump, after all, was pro-Israel in an almost absurdly comical way during his first term, delegating all his Middle East policy to his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who proceeded to sideline the Palestinians as part of what we call “Abraham”. Agreements” and the move of the American embassy to Jerusalem.
Make no mistake: Trump’s victory will be a disaster for the Palestinians and for the Palestinian cause. But the Palestinian people and their supporters are entitled to ask: how would Biden’s situation be different? Would more, fewer, or roughly the same number of Palestinians have been bombed, shot, crushed, and starved if Trump had been president after October 7?
More importantly, from a strategic perspective, this counterargument ignores the fact that not all political life spans four years; A longer-term horizon gives a clearer idea of why not voting for Biden could help the Palestinian cause. The logic is simple. Only by costing Democrats an election could Arabs, Muslims, and other pro-Palestinian Americans leverage their votes for meaningful change.
In other words, while Trump would certainly be worse for the Palestinians than Biden, the Democratic nominee in 2028, and forever after, would understand on a deep, visceral level that he cannot continue to ignore Palestinian aspirations and behave like Israel’s lawyer, banker and advocate. arms dealer. In doing so, party elites would only be playing catch-up with their base, which is already demanding more equitable policy in the Middle East.
From this perspective, Michigan could serve as an anchor for U.S. policy in the region, just as Florida does for Cuban policy. The obvious difference between the two is that although the anti-Castro/communist lobby does not face organized opposition, this provisional Palestinian lobby would take on one of the most powerful forces in American politics: AIPAC and the rest of the pro-Israeli lobby. .
In fact, it is this feature of American policy that probably constitutes the most likely pitfall of the Michigan Plan. Any electoral advantage enjoyed by a candidate with a more pro-Palestinian stance will likely be drowned out by the immense cost of fighting the AIPAC machine, which has a long history of spending heavily against perceived critics of Israeli leaders and policies. of right. . Under these conditions, even politicians sympathetic to the Palestinian cause might reasonably end up deciding that discretion is the better part of courage.
A first step?
Apart from the genocide of the Palestinian people, the war in Gaza has also caused irreparable damage to US foreign policy, with its image as leader of the so-called rules-based international order in tatters.
As for Biden, his financial, military and diplomatic support for the annihilation of Gaza will undoubtedly be the first thing his name is associated with around the world. This will be his historical legacy.
But as leaders, neither Biden nor Trump — if elected in November — will be around forever. By channeling their demographic power to change the equation of the Palestinian issue in American politics, Michigan’s Muslims and Arabs may have taken the first step in pushing the United States, the only great power with leverage over Israel , to truly deploy it for a sovereign Palestine. .
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Tel Aviv Tribune.