As is often the case with Donald Trump, the event is historic: convicted under criminal law for having falsified documents and trying to hide a sexual relationship with a porn star, the billionaire is once again making history. Certainly, through the less glorious of doors. With this verdict, has American justice changed the course of the November 5 presidential election? A priori, no. The Republican candidate will undoubtedly lose a few points among independent voters, but the vast majority will have moved on in four months.
Conversely, Joe Biden will still have to manage the consequences of a poisonous issue: that of the war in the Gaza Strip. This is, in reality, where the next American election is being played out. In 2020, Biden defeated the stainless Trump thanks to the mobilization of young people and minorities. But today, only a quarter of 18-29 year olds support his action. An electoral disaster in the making. “American youth are screaming their frustration at the management of their foreign policy and at the lack of empathy of the Biden administration,” said Sanam Vakil, a Middle East specialist at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland. In view of this frustration, there is a big risk that the bill will be paid in November…”
32% of Arab Americans ready to vote for Trump
Joe Biden has not only lost young people, but also some minorities. Thus, only 18% of Americans of Arab origin say they are ready to vote for him in key states according to the American Arab Institute, compared to 59% in 2020. Today, 32% of these voters would even vote for Trump, while its first measure in 2016 was to put in place a “Muslim Ban” to prohibit any Muslim person from entering American territory…
“This election will be 50/50, and three or four states will make the difference,” Ben Rhodes, former special advisor to Barack Obama, recently predicted during a briefing to the press. Even if the war in Gaza is not not the central subject of the presidential election, this event can tip the few thousand votes necessary to be in the White House If Biden loses in Michigan. [NDLR : un Etat clef avec une forte communauté musulmane] for 50,000 voters, then we will know what his support for Israel cost him.”
For eight months, the American president has tried to play the classic score of relations between Washington and Jerusalem: absolute support in public, firmness behind the scenes. But with Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right allies, this strategy goes from failure to failure, from diplomatic humiliation to diplomatic humiliation. The supremacist fringe of the Israeli government, represented by ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, refuses any agreement with Hamas before its total destruction, under penalty of bringing down the ruling coalition. Blocked, Netanyahu is trying to gain time, at the cost of thousands of deaths in Gaza and the endless captivity of 130 hostages.
With his surprise peace plan, Biden finally shows the muscles
Opposite, the American administration wants to impose its armistice on the Israeli government and Hamas, two protagonists who have every interest in continuing this war. “Biden must absolutely move both camps in order to calm the political climate internally, in the United States, but also to prevent Iran and its allies from exploiting tensions in the Middle East, maintains Sanam Vakil. Behind the scenes, the Biden administration has managed to prevent the war in Gaza from escalating into a much larger regional conflict, at least for the moment.
But each tragedy in the Palestinian enclave increases the risk of a conflagration in the Middle East. The Israeli offensive in Rafah, which has long been an American red line, continues, while hundreds of thousands of civilians are still there. Hence Biden’s surprise exit on May 31, announcing a three-step peace plan without even warning his Israeli allies. First objective: a six-week ceasefire, a massive exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners and the entry of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip. Both Hamas and Israel are paying lip service to “yes”, but Netanyahu is playing for time, deeming Biden’s plan “incomplete”.
Ultimately, the result doesn’t matter. After months of impasse, the octogenarian finally shows his muscles and confronts Israeli leaders with their contradictions. “Joe Biden must at least appear stronger, according to Ben Rhodes. Voters, who absently follow events in the Middle East, see their president demanding changes without anything happening. This is a real problem image.” Biden must urgently win peace in the Middle East if he wants to win in November in Michigan.