Forty-nine years since making his first trip to Israel, US
President Joe Biden is scheduled to arrive in the country on Wednesday on the
first leg of his first presidential visit to the Middle East.
For years he has regaled Jewish and Israeli audiences with
an account of a meeting he had during that trip with then-prime minister Golda
Meir, who told him that Israel’s secret weapon in dealing with Arab hostility
was, “We have no place else to go.”
He later termed the meeting one of the most “consequential”
of his life.
At that meeting, however, he complained to Meir about the
Labor Party’s platform which he said was leading to “creeping annexation” of
the territories. He also relayed to Meir that in Egypt he heard how the
Egyptian officials believed in “Israel military superiority.” He concluded, as
a result, that Israel should initiate the first step toward peace by unilateral
withdrawals from nonstrategic areas.
A half-century breeds enormous changes. The US has changed
dramatically, as has its position in the Mideast. Israel, too, has changed
dramatically, as has its position in the world. But two things from that
meeting remain constant, Biden is still opposed to Israel’s policies in the
territories, and Israel’s sense that it has no place else to go infuses much of
its strategic thinking – including Iran.
On Biden’s upcoming visit, both in Israel and in Saudi
Arabia, Iran issue is going to take up much more room than the occupied
territories.
Another issue, which came to the fore only a few months
after Biden’s initial visit, will also feature prominently, oil. His visit in
the late summer of 1973 came just before the Arab countries discovered oil as a
strategic weapon, and began to use it.
Biden is the seventh sitting US president to visit Israel.
It took 26 years before the first presidential visit to Israel, with Richard
Nixon taking that leap in 1974. Since then, there have been 10 other
presidential visits, including a one-day visit by Barack Obama in 2016 to
attend Shimon Peres’s funeral. Nixon, Jimmy Carter and Donald Trump all visited
once, George W. Bush and Obama visited twice, and Bill Clinton came here four
times.
This will not be the first time a US president comes during
an election campaign. Clinton came here in March 1996 – after organizing a
“Summit of Peacemakers’’ in Sharm e-Sheikh – and made clear his preference for
Peres, rather than the Likud leader running against him at the time, Benjamin
Netanyahu.
Clinton’s support didn’t help, as Netanyahu eked out a
razor-thin victory over Peres in elections held two months later. This should
be a cautionary tale for Prime Minister Yair Lapid, who is hoping that Biden’s
visit will give him a boost.
Historically, nods from US Presidents – though the optics
are often powerful – have not necessarily translated into huge bonuses at the
polls. Ask Netanyahu how much he was helped by the hug then-president Donald
Trump gave him before the two elections in 2019, and the one in 2020. Trump was
all-in for Netanyahu, yet Netanyahu didn’t get the votes he needed to form a
coalition.
What Biden’s visit will do for Lapid is make him look prime
ministerial. Photos of Lapid meeting and greeting Biden, and even audio of
Biden praising the new acting prime minister, may help remove lingering doubt
among those who believe that the onetime television journalist is not yet ready
for the political prime time.
It is
not, however, going to move voters from the pro-Netanyahu camp to the
anti-Netanyahu camp headed by Lapid.
What is the goal? Beyond Lapid, what does Israel want from
the Biden visit?
First of all, it just wants the visit
itself. Presidential visits are still important for Israel because they
reinforce the impression – an important one for Jerusalem in projecting power
throughout the region and beyond – that its alliance with the US is steadfast
and solid, and that it continues to enjoy a close and special relationship with
Washington.
This not only deters those who might want to harm Israel,
realizing that the US stands firmly behind it, but also encourages those who
might want to get closer to Israel, because of Israel’s closeness to America.
Presidential visits demonstrate that closeness.
Such a demonstration is especially important now, amid a
constant drumbeat of stories about how Israel’s support in the US is on the
decline, especially among Biden’s own Democratic Party, and especially among
young voters in that party.
Secondly, Israel wants coordination on the Iranian dossier
to come from this visit. It wants to coordinate with Biden regarding
policy toward the Islamic Republic if there is no new nuclear agreement, and it
wants to know what type of security architecture the US plans for the Mideast
in that eventuality. Israel doesn’t only want to listen; it wants to give its
input. Furthermore, Israel also wants to hear from Biden what the US plans to
do if an agreement is signed, and Iran violates it.
Biden is scheduled to arrive Wednesday afternoon and will be
leaving for Saudi Arabia on Friday. He will also be spending a few hours in the
Palestinian Authority with PA President Mahmoud Abbas.
There, too, there will be meetings with interlocutors who
want something. The Palestinians will want to hear Biden talk about a
two-state solution, and provide concrete steps toward working toward a
“diplomatic horizon.” They will want commitments regarding opening a consulate
in east Jerusalem, reopening the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s office in
Washington, and pledges of more financial support for the PA.
They
are likely to be disappointed, as – unlike other presidents on trips to Israel
and the Mideast – the Palestinian issue, resolving this issue, is nowhere near
the top of the president’s agenda for this trip.
When discussions about a possible presidential visit became
public a few months ago, Naftali Bennett was prime minister – the government
was shaky, but still held. Even though the government has since fallen, a new
prime minister is in office, and elections are four months away, the Americans
proved very determined to go ahead with the visit.
Why
visit Jerusalem at a time when the prime minister is not going to be able to
make any significant promises, since in four months he may not be able to act
on them. Why risk being seen as meddling in internal Israeli politics?
Israel
is only a sidelight on this visit. Had Biden been coming only to Israel, he
probably would have canceled and come next year, after the US midterm elections
and when a new government would be in place in Jerusalem. But Israel is just
the appetizer on this presidential voyage. Saudi Arabia is the main course.
Ironically,
Biden is actually using the appetizer to explain to critics why he is moving on
to the main course. He is using Israel to deflect criticism at home about
visiting Saudi Arabia, despite that country’s human rights violations, despite
its involvement in the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and despite
Biden’s having said in the 2020 presidential campaign that it is a country that
should be treated like a “pariah.”
One of the main purposes of this visit to the region, Biden
said at a press conference in Spain last month, is to “deepen Israel’s
integration in the region.”
“I think we’re going to be able to do that, which is good –
good for peace and good for Israeli security,” he said. “That’s why Israeli
leaders have come out so strongly for my going to Saudi Arabia.”
Biden is going to Saudi Arabia, where he will join a meeting
of the Gulf Cooperation Council plus Iraq, Egypt and Jordan, and is expected to
see Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whom he has pointedly snubbed since
becoming president. In Saudi Arabia, both Biden and the Saudis have their
wants.
Biden wants, in fact he desperately needs, the Saudis to
increase oil production to make up for shortfalls in supply caused by Russia’s
invasion of Ukraine. This has led to skyrocketing prices in the US, with the
average cost per gallon now standing at $4.79 a gallon (still well below the $8.96
Israelis pay per gallon at the pump).
The president is making his Mideast trip as the US economy
is in the doldrums, sending his popularity numbers to new lows. Biden’s
approval rating (39% on June 30) was almost 3 points lower than Trump’s at the
same stage of his presidency. Low popularity isn’t because he has not put
enough energy into the Mideast peace process, but, rather, primarily because of
the economy – inflation and gas prices.
He hopes that in Saudi Arabia he can find a cure, at least,
for gas prices, but this may be too high of an ask.
The Saudis, smarting from what they feel is the shabby way
they were treated by Biden and this administration, are in no great rush to
come to the president’s aid.
Lowering gas prices will help the Democrats – poised to get
clobbered in five months in the US midterm election. But the Saudis aren’t
interested in the Democrats doing well at the polls. If anything, they would
prefer a Republican Congress and – in another two years – a Republican
president.
Saudis
also have their wants. They want the US to acknowledge that Riyadh has been a
loyal strategic partner for 80 years; they want the US to acknowledge that the
country has suffered from Houthi attacks; they want the Houthis reinstated on
the American list of terrorist organizations; they want respect from
Washington, and not to be viewed merely as America’s gas station.
In
addition, they want assurances from Biden that they can count on the US in the
future. The Saudis are looking for assurances that the US is not withdrawing
from the region and is still willing to use its vast military power, and they
want to hear how the US plans to protect them from Iran.
Biden
will be flying into a region this week where a lot of different parties have a
lot of different asks and expectations. Inevitably, some people are going
to be disappointed, Biden himself may be among them.
