Biden visit offers Israel's Lapid secure platform to address Palestinian issue
The American pressure on Israel to make goodwill gestures to the Palestinians before President Joe Biden arrived empowered Prime Minister Yair Lapid to advance steps that would otherwise have been difficult for him to take.
US President Joe Biden's arrival to Jerusalem today, two weeks after Prime Minister Yair Lapid took office and less than four months before the Nov. 1 elections, offers Lapid an opportunity to position himself as a world leader. Biden's words reinforcing the US commitment to Israel’s security also benefit Lapid politically, as Israeli voters are traditionally very attentive to security issues.
From Israel, Biden will fly to Saudi Arabia, where he might announce an agreement between Jerusalem and Riyadh on control over two islands in the Straits of Tiran. If such an agreement is not concluded in time for the visit, other Saudi steps signaling rapprochement with Israel could be publicized. From Lapid’s point of view, any steps in the direction of normalization with Saudi Arabia would further reinforce his status as head of Israel's center camp and assist his government capitalize on the Abraham Accords.
Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who had signed the Abraham Accords in 2020, must be concerned that Lapid will become the new champion of Israel’s relations with Gulf countries. The current government's numerous moves in that direction, including security cooperation agreements with Morocco and with Bahrain as well as a host of commercial and economic agreements with the Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco could cost Netanyahu his claim to fame and his diplomatic legacy.
In a July 11 statement, only two days before Biden’s arrival, Netanyahu pledged that should he be elected prime minister, he would establish “full peace agreements” with Saudi Arabia and sign “additional deals that will bring us closer to the end of the Arab-Israeli conflict.”
