In four weeks’ time, the president of the United States will fly to Israel. He doesn’t know whether Israel will still have a government when he arrives, or even which prime minister will greet him in Jerusalem. Mr Biden is doing this so he can fly on from Israel to Jeddah, in Saudi Arabia, where he will meet a prince who he promised to make a “pariah” under two years ago.
Heads of state don’t usually engage in high-profile meetings and visits when one of them is close to the political brink. This is particularly true of the American president, whose trips abroad involve an airlift of armoured vehicles and helicopters and many weeks of intensive advance planning. But Israel-America relations are always about much more than just routine diplomacy.
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Naftali Bennett
Both sides have played at using the special relationship between the two countries for domestic politics. In 1996, President Clinton helped convene an international conference of leaders in Egypt and then invited Shimon Peres to Washington in the run-up to that year’s election. This was a blatant attempt to bolster the latter’s flagging campaign. It didn’t help. Peres lost anyway.
Nineteen years later, Benjamin Netanyahu, who won that election, flew to Washington two weeks before another close election, to make a speech attacking President Barack Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran. In a rare snub to a visiting Israeli prime minister, Mr Obama refused to meet him. Mr Netanyahu won that election, but his speech failed in delivering enough Senate votes to block the Iran Deal.
But even by the bizarre standards of Israel-US ties, the upcoming Biden visit is unprecedented. By the time Air Force One lands at Ben Gurion airport, the government may have fallen and the country could be on the way to an election in three or four months’ time.
Naftali Bennett, who announced on Tuesday his joy at hosting the president, may be an interim caretaker prime minister by then, or, if the votes that bring down the government come from his “bloc” of parties in the coalition, have been replaced by Yair Lapid. There are even mutterings within his own Yamina party of a new government being formed during the term of this Knesset, led by Mr Netanyahu.
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Jamal Khashoggi (Photo: Getty Images)
The original date for the visit was 26 June. When it was postponed, the assumption in Israel was that the political uncertainty was the main reason. But now it’s been officially announced — despite the political situation in Jerusalem becoming even more uncertain.
“Israel’s a special case, particularly during the lead-up to the midterm elections,” explained one veteran American diplomat.
“It’s hard to see Biden travelling to Saudi Arabia without going to Israel. Obama made that mistake when he didn’t go to Israel on his first Middle East visit and Biden doesn’t want to repeat that.”
While the timing of Mr Biden’s visit may be somewhat unorthodox, the real story of this trip is that the second leg, where he will be continuing on to Riyadh. As one Israeli diplomat put it: “We’re really not the story of Biden’s trip. It’s all about the Saudis.” In what may be one of the most humiliating reversals of policy in his term, Mr Biden — who as a candidate for president, went out of his way to promise to “punish” the Saudis for their human-rights violations and the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, to make them “pay a price” and to treat them like a “pariah” — is on his way to make amends.
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Yair Lapid
After his election, Mr Biden made a point of speaking directly with King Salman rather than with his son and de-facto Saudi ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who reportedly decided on Mr Khashoggi’s murder. Now he will be meeting MBS face-to-face.
The president doesn’t have much of a choice. With petrol in the US now costing more than $5 per gallon and his Democrats staring at a mauling in the midterms in November, he needs to do whatever he can to boost energy supplies at a time when he is calling upon Europe to join him in sanctions on Russia.
He’s certainly finding it a difficult pill to swallow. On Sunday, he told reporters that “the commitments from the Saudis don’t relate to anything having to do with energy”. The real reason he was going, he said, “has to do with national security for them — for Israelis”.
Some claim that Israel’s influence in Washington is shrinking, but at least the country is still much more popular than Saudi Arabia, and enhancing its security can still be a worthwhile pursuit for a Democrat president. But few Israelis in the know have any illusions that this is about them.
“Our relationship with the Saudis is a very gradual process,” said a senior Israeli official. “This visit won’t change anything fundamental or lead to a major breakthrough. Perhaps we’ll get something out of it, like a Saudi agreement to Israeli overflights but probably nothing more than that.” (At present, the Saudis only allow non-Israeli airlines to fly to and from Israel through its airspace.)
The establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in 2020 would not have been possible without discreet Saudi approval. But the kingdom itself is not yet prepared to publicly acknowledge its own ties with Jerusalem. Long-time observers of the Saudis are divided in their predictions over when it could happen.
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Shimon Peres
Some say it’s just a matter of time. Others insist it won’t happen in the lifetime of King Salman, who is 86. Then there is the question of the price. For full diplomatic relations with Israel, a presidential visit won’t be enough. This time, MBS will have to be received as an honoured guest at the White House. Unless oil prices continue to climb, that will probably happen only under a different president.
But Israel has nothing to complain about. Mr Biden’s preoccupation with the midterms, the Russian crisis and petrol prices means he lacks both the time and the political capital for squabbles with Jerusalem. Other foreign policy promises he made before the election, such as returning to the Iran Deal or re-opening the separate consulate that serves America’s relationship with the Palestinians, are at the bottom of his agenda. At most, the consulate will get a perfunctory mention in Mr Biden’s short visit to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Bethlehem, but that’s all. He wants Israeli help with the Saudis. That’s why he’s making the trip.
Postponing the inevitable?
So will the visit have any effect on the internal political situation?
Mr Biden has probably never heard of Nir Orbach. Until recently, most Israelis hadn’t either. But the hitherto anonymous apparatchik in Mr Bennett’s Yamina, who has emerged as the likeliest next defector from the coalition and the 61st MK prepared to dissolve the Knesset, could decide whether Mr Bennett is indeed around to greet Mr Biden next month.
In a statement on Monday, he announced that he no longer sees himself as a member of the coalition, but that he’s not rushing to vote for the Knesset’s dissolution either. “Serial elections do not serve the necessary stability to run the country,” he said, so he is giving time for “a stable government with a national spirit” — but it’s not clear what this means. The current government isn’t about to adapt to his liking and there still don’t seem to be enough potential defectors to allow Mr Netanyahu to form a government in this Knesset.
Mr Orbach owes the prime minister his seat in the Knesset. He has promised him that, unlike their Yamina colleague Idit Silman, whose defection two months ago they learned of from the press, he won’t do anything without giving him full notice. Perhaps as part of their gentlemen’s agreement, he has promised to at least allow Mr Bennett to host a presidential visit in Jerusalem before he brings the government down.
And if he’s prepared to postpone by four weeks, then what’s another two more weeks until the Knesset’s summer session is over? And then it will be difficult to dissolve the Knesset until it reconvenes in October. Or as Mr Bennett said in an interview last week: “The government can survive for another month. And then another month.”
