The meeting last Friday between President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Naphtali Bennett appears to have gone well. There seemed to have been no flaps and no insults. Having been staffed and prepped perfectly, the meeting produced no surprises. As President Joe Biden had devoted his entire attention to the evolving withdrawal of the U.S. forces from Afghanistan, the meeting between the President and Israeli Prime Minister Bennett had been postponed by a day; but that appears not to have negatively impacted their meeting.
Only time will tell what actions—if any--their conversations produced, but Biden had the chance to meet his ninth Israeli prime minister in the an intimate setting which he treasures. For the first time in eleven years, Bennett had an opportunity to present a different image of an Israeli head of government. The Prime Minister was not exploiting the moment for his own self-aggrandizement as Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had done with President Barack Obama as well as with President Bill Clinton. The dynamics this time were far more traditional.
Substantively, it appears that the U.S. and Israel reviewed their positions on all the key issues. While Israel wanted the U.S. to stop trying to renegotiate the JCPOA, the Iran agreement, Biden apparently made clear he wanted to still try to reenter the agreement. What was said publicly and was important for Israel was that the President reiterated U.S. consideration of Israel’s perspective on the agreement. Biden clearly indicated that he would not agree to any arrangement that was would be dangerous to Israel's interests.
With respect to the Palestinian question and a two-state solution, Bennett appears to have avoided any disagreement with Biden. Presumably, he informed the White House of Defense Minister Benny Gantz’s forthcoming visit to Mohamoud Abbas in Ramallah on Sunday. This was to be the highest level meeting between the parties since 2010. Gantz extended a sizeable loan to the Palestinian Government; granted more building permits in addition to the ones granted by Bennett before he left for the U.S.; announced that Israel will resume remitting tax dollars it had collected to the Palestinian Authority; offered more work permits to Palestinians seeking employment in Israel; and Israel would not object to the U.S. re-opening its consulate in Jerusalem, which served as the de facto embassy to the Palestinian Authority.
It is likely that the President acknowledged that Bennett was endeavoring to defuse or at least defer any action on the property dispute with the Sheikh Jarrah residents in East Jerusalem. At the same time, Biden presumably agreed not to make a major issue over Bennett’s actions in Gaza. He acknowledged Israel’s right to actively respond to Hamas’s repeated testing of the new Government’s resolve by launching incendiary balloons against Southern Israel and inciting Israel into a major border clash.
The most interesting part of the substantive meetings that Bennett had was that he showed respect for the President’s views and appears to have left believing his positions and/or disagreements were relegated to private confidences. It appears Biden and Bennett established good chemistry which should enable both sides to move forward without always watching out for someone trying to score political points.
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Footnote
If anyone ever doubted that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was working from the same playbook as President Trump, the “fake news” story that was created over President Biden dozing off during his meeting with Prime Minister Bennett proves the point. Bibi acolytes apparently took the video from last Friday’s meeting and doctored the film. They produced their version showing the President nodding off during one of Bennett’s extended replies. This false video demonstrated the lengths that Netanyahu is willing to go—like Trump in his own way—to embarrass Biden and undermine the credibility of Prime Minister Bennett. Much of the Israeli right-wing media sought to denigrate the very successful Biden-Bennett meeting. This media falsity it appears to have blown over quickly, with hardly a whimper in the States.
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