In one of its first acts on social media since the inauguration, the Biden administration changed the Twitter description of the United States ambassador to Israel to include the West Bank and Gaza, but it then immediately reverted to the page’s original description. It remains unclear whether the temporary change signaled a departure from the pro-Israel policies of the Trump administration or was a technical glitch.
The name change, which momentarily read, “U.S. Ambassador to Israel, the West Bank and Gaza,” may have implied that President Biden, unlike his predecessor, does not recognize these regions as belonging to Israel, returning the U.S. to an Obama-era view of limited Israeli control in the Middle East.
The move seemed to mark a shift from former President Donald Trump’s policy of supporting the expansion of the Jewish state. Trump first indicated support for pro-Israel foreign policy with his relocation of the Israeli Embassy in March of 2018. While every president since 1999 vowed to move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which was recognized as Israel’s capital under the Trump administration, Trump formalized the long-standing policy with the construction of a new embassy.
“For many years, we failed to acknowledge the obvious: the plain truth that Israel’s capital is Jerusalem,” Trump said in a video address to those celebrating the embassy’s opening. “Today, we follow through on this recognition and open our embassy in the historic … city of Jerusalem.”
The Trump administration then recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights in March 2019, saying that the land was justly won during the Six-Day War of 1967.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who partook in a signing ceremony for the executive order in the White House Diplomatic Reception Room, celebrated Trump’s decision.
“Israel has never had a better friend than you,” he told Trump. “You have showed this time and again.”
Throughout the waning days of the Trump presidency, the former president brokered several historic peace accords between Israel and its neighbors. In the latter half of 2020, the administration oversaw Israel’s normalization of relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco. The UAE and Bahrain became the third and fourth Arab countries to normalize relations with the region’s sole democracy, following Egypt and Jordan in 1979 and 1994, respectively.
“In 2017, President Trump was strongly warned that recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel would set off an explosion in the Middle East,” said Jared Kushner, a former senior White House adviser and Trump’s son-in-law. “As it turned out, there has been an explosion, just not the kind of explosion the experts thought might happen. President Trump’s bold decisions led to an explosion of peace.”
Biden praised the “historic” agreement between Israel and the UAE last August and vowed to build on the progress made in the region if elected.
“The UAE’s offer to publicly recognize the state of Israel is a welcome, brave, and badly needed act of statesmanship,” Biden said. “A Biden-Harris administration will seek to build on this progress and will challenge all the nations of the region to keep pace.”
Representatives for the embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
