{"id":21309,"date":"2018-11-06T08:25:58","date_gmt":"2018-11-06T08:25:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=21309"},"modified":"2018-11-06T08:25:58","modified_gmt":"2018-11-06T08:25:58","slug":"us-midterm-elections-could-determine-us-foreign-policies-in-middle-east","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=21309","title":{"rendered":"US Midterm elections could determine US foreign policies in Middle East"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nDUBAI: Regional observers will watch the midterm elections in the US on Tuesday with added interest because of two separate, but pivotal, issues: Republican losses could alter the country\u2019s hard-line foreign policy, especially toward Iran, while two Democratic candidates are expected to make history as the first female Muslims elected to Congress.
The midterm elections mark two years since Donald Trump took power, the midpoint in the US president\u2019s four-year term. Republicans currently control the House of Representatives and the Senate, the two chambers that make up the US Congress.
\u201cThe question is, of course, how well the Democrats do, if they succeed in taking the House and less likely the Senate,\u201d said Dr. Charles Freilich, a senior fellow at the Belfer Center of the Harvard Kennedy School and adjunct associate professor of political science at the Middle East Institute at Columbia University in New York.
\u201cIf the Republicans do well, this will merely reinforce the hard-line foreign policy, especially toward Iran. If the Democrats do well, they will push for a somewhat more moderate approach toward Iran, though the nuclear deal has already been abrogated.\"\"
\u201cAnother question is whether Trump intends to try to push his peace plan forward, in which case he will also have to provide the Palestinians with some inducements to get them to re-engage, whether bilateral US-Palestinian, or pressure on Israel, to change some of its policies,\u201d Freilich said. \u201cMidterm elections tend to have a limited impact on policy, unless there is a dramatic change.\u201d
Some are predicting that the Democrats could gain control of the House of Representatives, while Republicans will retain control of the Senate. Among the Democrats in the House, it is expected there will be two Muslim-American newcomers: Palestinian-American Rashida Tlaib, who is running unopposed in her Detroit-area riding; and Somali-American Ilhan Omar, a former refugee who won the Democratic primary in her Minnesota district.
\u201cThese women being elected could be the start of a trend,\u201d said Mark Katz, professor of government and politics at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. \u201cThere are places in the US where there are significant Muslim-American populations and they\u2019re voting. I have a feeling these won\u2019t be the only two women that, in future, we\u2019ll see more of.\u201d
Katz said that US support for Israel has been partly a function of domestic politics, but there are growing constituencies that favor the Palestinian side. \u201cI don\u2019t see the US ever turning against Israel, but what I do see \u2014 and I think many in Israel fear, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu \u2014 is that the changes in US demographics are going to mean that it won\u2019t be unconditional American support, and that is already one big step.\u201d
The women are viewed as being able to raise Palestinian and Muslim issues to a high level. \u201cNo more will pro-Israeli representatives and Islamophobes have the House floor to themselves,\u201d said Dr. Albadr Alshateri, politics professor at the National Defense College in Abu Dhabi. \u201cBoth women are fighters, and very fierce at that.\u201d
However, beyond the halls of Congress, he said, the newly minted representatives will have little impact. \u201cFreshman congresspersons are not known to carry huge sway in legislation. They tend to feel their way in the contours of power. Seniority is very important, and the new members have to find mentors to guide and support them.\u201d
In this midterm election, there are 435 seats available in the House of Representatives and 35 Senate seats up for election, including two special elections in Minnesota and Mississippi. In these elections, the incumbent president is on the ballot as much as the individual candidate.
\u201cTrump is a controversial figure, and maybe a radioactive one in these elections,\u201d Alshateri said. \u201cIt looks like the Democrats have a very good chance to capture the House of the Representatives. All the same, the Senate map election looks like an uphill battle. The Democrats have to defend almost twice the number of seats in the Senate as the Republicans, and the Democrats need to keep their seats and pick up only two Senate seats to win back the upper house, but it is not going to be smooth sailing.\u201d
Should the expectation hold on Tuesday, he said, we can expect a divided government in a highly polarized society.
\u201cI do not expect much to be done in terms of new legislation,\u201d he said. \u201cThe new Congress starting in January 2019 will start investigating Trump for a motley of legal violations, and he will be a lame duck president until the 2020 presidential elections. In that case, Trump will be fighting for his political life and will have precious little time for dueling with the Iranian ayatollahs or searching for an Israeli-Palestinian peace.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DUBAI: Regional observers will watch the midterm elections in the US on Tuesday with added interest because of two separate, but pivotal, issues: Republican losses could alter the country\u2019s hard-line foreign policy, especially toward Iran, while two Democratic candidates are expected to make history as the first female Muslims elected to Congress.The midterm elections mark…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":21310,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21309\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}