Washington experienced one of its more notable political weeks in recent memory, with U.S. President Joe Biden stepping down from his political campaign for a second presidential term and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu giving an unprecedented speech to the U.S. Congress. The impacts of these two events cannot be understated in the context of U.S. foreign policy on Israel and Palestine, let alone the broader Middle East, during an election year. The question at hand is whether those effects will be felt immediately or in the long term, with the latter much more likely given Washington’s foreign policy inertia and long-running deference to Israel.
Biden dropped out of the presidential race on July 21, marking the first incumbent president to do so since Lyndon B. Johnson during the Vietnam War. While many conditions are different between these two events, political upheaval and unpopular foreign policies draw a direct through line between the administrations. While Biden likely dropped out due to ever-worsening polling stemming from concerns about his age, anti-war sentiments like those facing Johnson at the time played a significant role in lowering those poll numbers as well.
Biden immediately endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic Party’s nominee for president, with the party apparatus largely falling in line. Harris has played a traditional background role common for her position while fulfilling a “bad-cop” role in the administration concerning Israel’s military operations in Gaza. In contrast, administration officials have claimed there is no distance between her and the president on the issue. Some experts, pundits, and former officials have tried to cast Harris as frustrated with the administration’s Israel-Palestine strategy, highlighting her calls for a more aggressive stance against Israeli human rights violations—indicative of the difficulty of campaigning as vice president.
This series of events overshadowed Netanyahu’s now-notorious visit to Washington. During his address to Congress, the Israeli prime minister presented a campaign speech designed to bolster conservative support for his political survival, quickly moving away from the previously promised “unity” speech he foreshadowed ahead of the trip. Indeed, Netanyahu pushed numerous falsehoods about his country’s operations in Gaza while attacking U.S. citizens to the thunderous applause of their elected representatives.
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