If Biden elected, Palestinians say they’ll urge reopening of DC office, resumption of funding

Senior Palestinian Authority official Nabil Shaath says that “whether Joe Biden or anyone else reaches power [in the upcoming US presidential elections], they cannot be worse than Donald Trump.”

“Biden will not be worse than Trump the fool, who is leading America towards destruction and acting against the Palestinian cause,” Shaath, who is a key adviser to PA President Mahmoud Abbas, tells the Dunya al-Watan news site.

Nabil Shaath, the commissioner for external relations of the Fatah movement, seen in his office in the West Bank city of Ramallah, January 18, 2012 (photo credit: Miriam Alster/Flash90)

Shaath says the Palestine Liberation Organization would ask an incoming Biden administration to reopen the PLO’s office in Washington DC — which the White House ordered to close in 2018 — and to reverse Trump’s cut of US funding.

“We’ll ask for it immediately, although it may take some time to implement,” Shaath says, adding that the Palestinians would be patient until Biden could “assemble his administration.”

Ramallah has made little effort to conceal its desire to see Trump out of the White House, having repeatedly opposed the US president’s policies regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over the last four years.

PA Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh told an audience by videoconference earlier in October: “God help us if Trump is reelected.”

— Aaron Boxerman