JERUSALEM — President Joe Biden will arrive in Israel Wednesday for his first trip to the Middle East as president looking to show support for that nation amid low expectations that his visit will lead to any fundamental shift in the growing tensions between Israelis and Palestinians.
While most presidents have centered their visits to Israel around trying to help resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there are no indications from Biden administration officials that there are plans to do anything more than reaffirm Biden’s support for a two-state solution.
Instead, much of the emphasis ahead of the trip has been focused on improving relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors as part of Biden’s wider efforts to bring stability to the region and counter Iran’s growing nuclear threat. After two days in Israel and a visit to the West Bank, Biden plans to travel to Saudi Arabia, where administration officials have indicated there may be some early steps towards publicly normalizing relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel.
July 12, 202203:56
“This may be the first presidential visit to Israel in history where the president doesn’t really have that deep of a policy agenda, and certainly not a real substantive one on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the peace process,” said Michael Koplow, chief policy officer at the Israel Policy Forum, a non-profit group that advocates for a two-state solution. “While a presidential trip here is always exciting, I’m not sure that there’s going to be a huge amount that’s going to come out of this one with regard to Israeli-Palestinian issues that we haven’t seen before.”
One issue that will likely be discussed is allowing direct flights from Israel to Saudi Arabia for Israeli Muslims to make the hajj pilgrimage, as well as lifting other air restrictions for Israeli flights over the country, foreign policy analysts have said.
“Any normalization of any kind would be a long process, but looking for progress and momentum in that direction is certainly something we are focused on as we head off to the Middle East,” White House national security advisor Jake Sullivan said.
Biden’s visit comes just weeks after a major upheaval in the Israeli government that unseated prime minister Naftali Bennett and triggered another Israeli election in November, the fifth in less than four years. Instead of meeting with Bennett, with whom administration officials had been working closely for the past year, Biden will sit down with caretaker Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid.
The uncertainty around who will be leading Israel come November has added to the difficulty Biden faces in trying to advance any peace talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians, said Dan Shapiro, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel during the Obama administration who is now a fellow at the Atlantic Council.
“There’s not an Israeli government that is well positioned to make any significant political or diplomatic moves on the Israeli-Palestinian issue,” Shapiro said. “And Palestinian leadership is still in somewhat of a state of disarray as people seem to be jockeying for an expected transition at some point there.”
While the Middle East has largely taken a backseat to China and Russia on Biden’s foreign policy agenda, making the trip to Israel at this point in his presidency sends a signal to that nation and its supporters that it remains a priority and avoids a point of criticism made of President Barack Obama who waited until the start of his second term to visit Israel.
“I think it was a high priority for President Biden to make a visit to Israel early in his presidency. He has made his support for Israel central to his foreign policy positions and political identity throughout his career,” said Shapiro. “He certainly wanted to find a way to demonstrate that warmth and not to have any questions raised about that.”
Biden is also planning to meet with Israeli President Isaac Herzog and former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as it is customary for visiting presidents to also meet with the head of the Israeli opposition party, Sullivan said. Biden and Netanyahu, who was a close ally of former President Donald Trump and is fighting to regain his old job in the upcoming elections, have a complex history together going back decades, to Biden’s days as a senator.
Along with meetings with Israeli leaders, Biden will get a briefing on Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system and a new laser-enabled system called Iron Beam, and plans to visit Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial. He will also hold a virtual summit with the leaders of Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and India, focused on food shortages as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Expectations are low for concrete developments out of Biden’s West Bank visit on Friday for a meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Palestinian leaders have been pushing the Biden administration to reopen the U.S. consulate in East Jerusalem and for Biden to more vocally oppose Israeli settlements in the West Bank, as well as to address the wider issue of the Palestinian desire for an independent state with a capital in East Jerusalem.
Lingering over Biden’s visit with officials in Israel and the West Bank will also be the death of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, for which human rights and journalist advocacy groups have pushed him to hold Israel accountable. The U.S. concluded earlier this month that Abu Akleh was most likely killed by gunfire from Israeli military positions, but U.S. investigators have said they couldn’t reach a definitive conclusion about the origins of the bullet that killed her, the State Department said.
Investigations by the United Nations and independent Western media organizations found that Israeli fire led to her death.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
