The question of who would fill what job in a Biden administration is basically irrelevant - his policies are basically set in stone.
The day before the U.S. presidential election, the progressive Israel Democracy Institute published the results of a poll of Israeli Jews asked whether they believed President Donald Trump or former Vice President Joe Biden would be better for Israel. Some 70 percent named Trump, 13 percent chose Biden and 17 percent said they didn’t know.
Since Election Day, and since U.S. networks proclaimed Biden the winner, Israel’s media, along with its diplomatic and security establishments and political leadership, busied themselves by scouring the lists of candidates for senior foreign policy positions in the Biden administration and considering the implications of so-and-so’s appointment to national security adviser. The notion behind the name game is that the appointment of one person over another will significantly impact a Biden administration’s Middle East policy either in Israel’s favor or to its detriment.
There is nothing new about the name game. Israel’s political and national security leaders and its media know-it-alls play it every four years, and indeed, often personnel has been policy. For instance, when Trump replaced his first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, with Mike Pompeo, things changed. Tillerson opposed leaving the Iran nuclear deal and opposed moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. Pompeo supported both.
But in the case of the apparently incoming Biden administration, who fills what job is basically irrelevant, and worrying about it should certainly not be a priority. Biden’s policies are basically set in stone.
Biden, his running mate Kamala Harris and his team repeatedly set out his Middle East policies, in detail, over the course of the campaign. And in the days since it became clear that Biden is far more likely than Trump to be inaugurated on Jan. 20, his advisers have restated those policies and, in some cases, have taken initial steps towards implementing them.
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