UK police arrest 27 climate activists over airport protest plans

ATLANTA, GEORGIA: Prominent U.S.-based Arab commentators reacted to Thursday night’s debate between President Joe Biden and his rival Donald Trump with a mixture of disapproval and disappointment, saying the first face-to-face campaign event “was devoid of substance.”

Biden and Trump participated in the CNN-hosted debate at the network’s headquarters in Atlanta without a studio audience and in a format that cut off microphones when the candidates ran over time or interrupted each other.

Amal Mudallali, a former Lebanese journalist and diplomat who serves as Lebanon’s permanent representative to the United Nations, was disappointed with both candidates’ performances, calling it “the saddest debate I have ever seen in America.”

“It wasn’t actually a debate,” Mudallali told Arab News. “It was just name-calling and personal attacks.”

She added: “Even when questions were asked on very important issues, the response was either that one candidate stumbled, or the other changed the subject or did not answer the question.”

Indeed, many of the few exchanges on Middle Eastern issues have come across as personal attacks, lacking in depth and real political discussion.

During the debate, Trump criticized Biden’s border policy, saying it was allowing terrorists into the U.S. “We have the highest number of terrorists coming into our country right now,” he said.

“All the terrorists all over the world, not just in South America, all over the world. They’re coming from the Middle East, from everywhere, from all over the world. They’re pouring in. And this guy just left it open.”

Trump also highlighted people his administration killed while he was president, including Daesh leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi and Iran’s Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani.

Biden responded to Trump: “Iran attacked American troops and he did nothing.”

Trump also claimed that Hamas would never stage an attack on Israel on October 7 if he were president because Iranian supporters of the Palestinian militant group would not have the resources under his stringent sanctions.

“Israel would never be invaded by Hamas in a million years. Do you know why? Because Iran broke up with me,” he said. “I wouldn’t let anyone do business with them. They ran out of money. They were broke. They had no money for Hamas. They had no money for anything. There is no money for terror.”

Given the tone of the debate, Mudallali believed neither contender won.

“There is no winner in this debate,” she said. “There is only one loser, and that is the United States of America, which has no better candidate or better candidates who rise to their role in the world, to their importance, to their capabilities.”

Mudallali said what was “little discussed” about the conflict in Ukraine and violence in the Middle East, including the war in Gaza and the armed exchange between Israel and Hezbollah along the border with Lebanon, was “the most disappointing part” of the debate.

“At a time when in the world, in Europe and in the Middle East, we are dealing with two serious conflicts, in which thousands of people are dying in Gaza, 37,000 and thousands of people in Ukraine, you see that the foreign policy debate in this debate she was shallow. This didn’t happen,” she said.

“There was no debate, no vision of America’s role in peace, of how we end these wars, of how we end this tragedy that’s happening. It was really, really, really sad that there was no real debate about foreign policy.

“There was no attempt to provide a vision for the day after or the day after in the world or how America and its role can contribute to ending these two conflicts.”

Rana Abtar, a talk show host at Asharq News in Washington, agreed with many commentators, saying that the debate primarily shed light on Biden’s limitations as a candidate.

“During this debate, it was obvious that President Biden had problems with his speech and performance,” Abtar told Arab News. “It certainly won’t help him in dealing with voters who have serious doubts and questions about his age.”

But Abtar said Trump’s performance also had its flaws. “Trump, as usual, did better. But he twisted a lot of facts,” she said. “It won’t help him with independent voters. I need their votes to win this election cycle.”

Abtar said the debate was heavily focused on domestic issues. “As we expected, we heard a lot about the economy,” she said. “That’s the number one issue that interests the American voter.

“We’ve heard a lot of talk about immigration, a lot of attacks from President Trump on Biden, on the Biden administration’s actions on immigration, and a lot of talk about abortion. That’s largely to get the women’s vote. Both Trump and Biden are trying to get the women’s vote to win the November election as well.

“It was also interesting to focus on the African American vote, and that is also a very important vote for both candidates to win the election in November.”

Abtar said that because of the focus on domestic issues, none of the candidates delved substantively into foreign affairs.

“Both candidates were asked a lot of questions about foreign policy,” she said. “We heard a lot of talk about Russia and Ukraine.

“Trump, as you might expect, attacked President Biden on his Russia policy. He claimed that the war in Ukraine would not have happened under his administration. Biden responded by attacking back and talking about Trump’s threats to leave NATO during his presidency.

“But the main topic that was brought up was of course the war in Gaza, and Trump was not very clear about his position on a Palestinian state.”

Abtar said Biden has also been unclear about his position on the Middle East, which has not allowed observers of the region to assess the likely direction the administration will take if the sitting president returns to office.

“As for Biden, he talked about his plan for a ceasefire and the release of the hostages, but it was not clear in his statements,” Abtar said.

“So what we actually heard were two very vague statements from the candidates, from the current president and the former president, without anything specific, without any policy.”

Referring to the Biden administration’s peace plan for Gaza, first presented in May but yet to be accepted by Israel and Hamas, Abtar said little was known about potential next steps.

“Even though Biden has put out this plan and this proposal, it seems like we’ve reached a dead end,” she said. “The answers haven’t been clear on that.”

Highlighting his peace plan during the debate, Biden said that “the first stage is to provide assistance to the hostages in order to obtain a ceasefire” and “the second stage is a ceasefire with additional conditions.”

He added that he provides Israel with everything it needs, except for the 2,000-pound bomb, because “they don’t work very well in populated areas. They kill a lot of innocent people. We provide Israel with all the weapons it needs, when it needs them.”

Joyce Karam, a veteran journalist and senior news editor at Al-Monitor, was also impressed by Biden’s poor performance.

“It was a very bad debate for President Joe Biden,” she told Arab News. “I can say as someone who interviewed Biden when he was vice president and discussed him in previous races and also saw him during many debates, this was definitely his worst.

“The decline in his performance was just obvious — his voice, his style, his delivery. The American president, he looked fragile and he just looked weak.”

Karam believes Trump won in part because of Biden’s poor performance.

“The consensus among observers is that Donald Trump won this debate, and won it handily, not because he offered popular policies or visionary ideas, but because Biden was inconsistent,” she said.

“Sometimes you just couldn’t understand what he (Biden) was saying, and he just couldn’t finish a sentence.”

Many commentators are now asking whether the Democratic Party will continue to support Biden’s candidacy or will seek a last-minute change in the candidate who will run for president in November.

“I’m not sure whether these two men (Biden and Trump) will debate again or whether Biden will ultimately be the Democratic nominee,” Karam said.

“There have already been rumors that Biden might forgo a second term and announce that he’s changed his mind and won’t run for reelection. And then we could see an open Democratic convention in Chicago.”

Turning to Thursday’s clash, Karam said the 90-minute debate lacked “great substance” on many issues, including the Middle East and the Gaza conflict.

“Most of the discussion was about the economy, social issues, health care, health care and the deficit that is typical in such cases,” she said. “But we saw a lot of trivial statements, especially from Trump, and we didn’t really learn much substantive information from either candidate when it came to the Middle East.

In one of the debate’s most memorable moments, Trump said Biden “has become like a Palestinian. But they don’t like him because he’s a very bad Palestinian. He’s weak.”

Reacting to the comment, Karam said: “Trump accusing Biden of being a ‘bad Palestinian’ is just next level, and Biden had no convincing answers when asked about ending the war in Gaza and supporting Israel.” “These were the same talking points from the candidates that we heard over the last few months during the campaign.”

Karam said there was “little real debate about the big issues surrounding American foreign policy” and issues such as how Trump will achieve his stated goal of ending the war in Ukraine. Instead, there was a lot of “lofty talk, a lot of platitudes, very little substance.”

There was also “little about the global power struggle between the U.S. and China. There was almost nothing about the future of U.S. presence and influence in the Middle East, and absolutely nothing that I heard about Iran’s nuclear program.”