On the one hand, Netanyahu promised during the last election campaign that he would annex the Jordan Valley and all Israeli settlements. He relies on the Trump Administration, which indicated support for such a move when it announced its Israeli-Palestinian "Peace to Prosperity" plan in January. The two countries appointed a joint committee to determine the precise areas to be annexed (up to 30 percent of the West Bank) and recognized as sovereign Israeli territory by the United States.

On the other hand, Israel faces an unusual situation in its relationship with the United States, which it has always sought to sustain on a bipartisan basis. Virtually all elected US Democrats, and the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden, oppose unilateral annexation. In a video at the AIPAC Policy Conference in March, Biden said: "Israel, I think, has to stop the threats of annexation and settlement activity."

So the dilemma for Israel's government is whether to pursue a favored policy that is supported by the incumbent US president, but which is openly opposed by the challenger and opposition party, including many of its members with strong records of supporting Israel. [...]

[T]he heart of Democrats' argument is on how the strategic US interest in sustaining the close US-Israel relationship as a values-based partnership would be undermined if Israel's Jewish or democratic character were compromised. "To be frank," Biden continued in his video at AIPAC, threats of annexation "are taking Israel further from its democratic values, undermining support for Israel... especially among young people in both political parties." A Pew poll from April 2019 backs up his argument, with younger Democrats and Republicans both holding starkly lower favorable views of the Israeli government than of the Israeli people.

Some Israelis may argue that the Democratic Party is no longer sufficiently supportive of Israel to be a factor in Israeli decision making. According to this theory, disagreements between Israel and the Obama Administration over the Iran nuclear deal and UN Security Council Resolution 2334 marked a fundamental shift. The harsh criticism of Israel by two freshman Members of Congress, Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, and the strong run by Sen. Bernie Sanders in his presidential campaign are taken as further confirmation of the change. Allegedly, a Biden administration would necessarily be captive to these forces in the party, and therefore, Israel must proceed with annexation immediately.

That is nonsense. Biden's primary victory, indeed, proves the opposite. Whereas some voices more critical of Israel have been heard in the Democratic party, Biden won the nomination while expressing his deep personal bonds with Israel and pledging to keep backing its security and defend it from any form of delegitimization, including the BDS movement. Democratic primary voters chose the candidate who called placing conditions on US assistance to Israel "outrageous" and "a gigantic mistake." Why, one might ask, would Israel take an action that hurts the credibility of those Democrats committed to sustaining their party's traditional support for Israel?