Palestinians protested on Friday in Jerusalem and Bethlehem over President Biden’s visit as he met with the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, amid widespread frustration with U.S. support for Israel and the Biden administration’s policies toward Palestinians.
On the eve of his visit to Bethlehem, the Biden administration announced hundreds of millions of dollars in new funding to Palestinian services, and said that Israel had agreed to roll out 4G phone reception in Palestinian-run areas of the West Bank.
The funding was hailed by some Palestinian officials, who said it would help revive Palestinian hospitals, in particular. But for some Palestinian protesters, these were piecemeal gestures that did little to advance the prospect of a Palestinian state.
“They left everything else,” said Suhaib Zahda, a political activist in Nablus, West Bank, “to ask for 4G?”
Palestinians have long questioned Washington’s ability to neutrally mediate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, citing strong American support for Israel at the United Nations and the size of U.S. financial and military support to Israel, which has cumulatively received more American aid than any other country since World War II.
Some Palestinians initially saw Mr. Biden’s presidency as a welcome relief from the Trump administration. But many now consider the Biden administration a disappointment because of its failure to reverse several Trump-era policies.
On Thursday, Mr. Biden restated his support for Palestinian statehood, calling for a “lasting negotiated peace between the State of Israel and the Palestinian people,” and underscoring his backing for a two-state solution to the conflict.
But following Israeli opposition, his administration has not reopened the U.S. consulate to the Palestinians in Jerusalem or the Palestinian mission in Washington, both of which were shut under Mr. Trump. It has also not formally rescinded the Trump administration’s legitimization of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which are considered illegal by most of the world.
Mr. Zahda, the political activist from Nablus, said Mr. Biden’s visit to Bethlehem was a largely empty gesture. “Palestinians consider the U.S. as a partner in the occupation, whether by funding it or by supporting Israel politically,” said Mr. Zahda, 39.
Palestinians’ criticism of the Biden administration grew recently after the killing in May of a Palestinian American journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, in the West Bank. A United States government investigation found that Ms. Abu Akleh was probably killed by Israeli fire, but officials said that Washington would not push Israel to pursue a criminal investigation into any Israeli soldier.
Diala Ayesh, a Palestinian lawyer and a protest organizer in Ramallah, said that many young Palestinians no longer held hope in any U.S. administration.
“We’re obviously not demanding or expecting anything from him,” Ms. Ayesh, 26, said of Mr. Biden. “We had hoped that Abbas would reject the meeting all together and save us and himself the humiliation.”
As his convoy drove through the West Bank on Friday, the president passed large banners that read: “Mr. President, this is apartheid.”
The term, which refers to the racist legal system that governed South Africa until the early 1990s, is an explosive charge in the debate around Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. A small but growing number of Israeli and international watchdogs accuse Israel of practicing a form of apartheid, echoing claims that Palestinians have made since at least the 1960s; the Israeli government condemns it as a baseless smear.
