NEWS & POLITICS Biden Snatched War From the Jaws of Israel Peace Deals. Pence Explains How He Did It BY TYLER O'NEIL MAY 18, 2021 12:10 PM ET

AP Photo/Evan Vucci A new era of peace was dawning in the Middle East with President Donald Trump in office. Last year, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Muslim-majority Kosovo, Sudan, and Morocco formally acknowledged the state of Israel, and Saudi Arabia was well on the way. Yet, barely four months into President Joe Biden’s term, thousands of Hamas rockets have targeted Israel, killing ten Israelis and likely killing Palestinians, as well. Israel has responded with targeted strikes taking out key terrorist leaders, and Hamas has claimed that these attacks have killed at least 201 Palestinians. What happened? How did the Middle East go from historic peace deals to the brink of war? Former Vice President Mike Pence provided a salient answer in a National Review op-ed on Monday. Pence argued that the violence between Israel and Palestine is “a direct result of the weakness shown by the Biden administration from its first day in office.” Recommended: Israel Kills Islamic Jihad Leader Behind Missile Attacks Pence argued that Biden and congressional Democrats enabled the recent Israeli conflict by abandoning unambiguous support for Israel, emboldening America’s enemies, and turning their backs on Trump’s legacy of peace in the Middle East. “Under the Trump-Pence administration, we made it crystal clear to the world that America stands with Israel,” Pence explained. “We withdrew from the dangerous Iran nuclear deal brokered by the Obama-Biden administration, which put the world’s leading state sponsor of terror on the path to nuclear weapons while sending pallets of cash to the mullahs in Iran. We acknowledged Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights and the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. And President Trump kept the promise made by countless Republican and Democrat politicians by actually following through in moving the American embassy to Jerusalem, the capital of the state of Israel.” The former Vice President noted that Democrats and foreign-policy “experts” attacked the Trump administration’s approach and warned that it would lead to war against Israel. Instead, the opposite happened. Pence touted the historic Abraham Accords, historic peace agreements between Israel and Arab-Muslim countries, as “the most significant breakthrough for peace in decades.” The Trump administration achieved this success because of America’s support for Israel, Pence argued. “Other nations knew where America stood with absolute certainty. They knew America would respond forcefully if our citizens or allies were threatened. As a result, they responded rationally by pursuing peace and harmony,” he wrote. Yet Biden rejected this “peace through strength” approach, the former vice president charged. Instead, Biden “has invited violence through weakness.” “President Biden has emboldened anti-Semitic terrorist groups such as Hamas by shunning Israeli leaders and restoring more than $200 million in aid to the Palestinians that had been canceled by the Trump-Pence administration. He unilaterally took the Iranian-backed Houthis off the list of designated terrorist organizations. And worst of all, he has announced his intention to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal, destabilizing the entire region,” Pence noted. While Biden has supported Israel’s right to defend itself in the current conflict, Pence noted that the Democratic president’s support for Israel has been extremely tepid. Pence argued that “every tepid statement uttered by the Biden-Harris administration is built on a false equivalency between Israel and Hamas. One is a sovereign nation with a legitimate government, and a trusted ally. The other is an internationally recognized terrorist organization that has fired more than 3,000 rockets at Jewish families and businesses in the past week.” The former vice president drew a line in the sand: “There is no moral equivalency between Israel and the terrorist group Hamas. President Biden and every American leader should uphold Israel’s right to self-defense and condemn the terrorists of Hamas — as well as their supporters and apologists — in the strongest possible terms.” Pence also faulted Biden for bringing back the weak approach of the Obama administration. “President Obama’s thin ‘red line’ in Syria, his decision to ‘lead from behind’ in Libya, and his slipshod withdrawal from Iraq each created power vacuums that were quickly filled by America’s enemies,” Pence noted. “Now Biden is repeating those grave errors by creating a power vacuum of his own.” “He has replaced strength with weakness, moral clarity with confusion, and loyalty with betrayal. Biden’s void, too, is being filled by America’s enemies — and Israelis are paying the price in blood,” Pence charged