Part of the administration's plans includes an attempt to restart the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians, inject $15 million into COVID-19 assistance for the Palestinians, and reformulate several US positions from the Trump era with regards to favoring Israeli settlement expansion into the West Bank in contravention of a two-state solution.
The official document obtained was given to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on March 1, according to The National, and was drafted by the deputy assistant secretary of state for Israeli-Palestinian affairs Hady Amr.
The memo, titled "The US Palestinian Reset and the Path Forward," was reported to be detailed and is seeking to rebuild relations with the Palestinians following years of poor US-Palestinian relations under the Trump administration.
"As we reset US relations with the Palestinians, the Palestinian body politic is at an inflection point as it moves towards its first elections in 15 years. At the same time, we [the US] suffer from a lack of connective tissue following the 2018 closure of the PLO office in Washington and refusal of Palestinian Authority leadership to directly engage with our embassy to Israel,” the memo read.
According to the memo, the American vision on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is “to advance freedom, security, and prosperity for both Israelis and Palestinians in the immediate term which is important in its own right, but also as means to advance the prospects of a negotiated two-state solution”.
The Biden Administration's approach to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process is expected to be rooted in past formulas, the two-state solution “based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed land swaps and agreements on security and refugees”.
The ways by which the administration will achieve that, according to the memo, include re-establishing diplomatic contact with the Palestinian Authority
The memo also makes note of the upcoming Palestinian elections, expressing concern over the potential of the Gaza-based Hamas terrorist group beating its rival Fatah, which controls the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.
The document further expressed interest in strengthening Palestinian institutions, which "includes strengthening civil society, media watchdogs and other elements of the fourth estate, such as emphasizing to the [Palestinian Authority] the need to protect civil society through the reductions of arrests of bloggers and dissidents.”