White House officials confirmed Aug. 11 that a high-ranking delegation would visit the Middle East at the end of the month to discuss “strengthening our relations with regional partners and the economic steps that can be taken both now and after a peace deal is signed to ensure security, stability and prosperity for the region.” In his seven months in office, US President Donald Trump has had time to realize that Israel cannot expect peace with its Arab neighbors without resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israeli-Saudi ties and the preservation of Israeli-Egyptian and Israeli-Jordanian partnerships require a divorce agreement and a fair and reasonable division of assets between the Jewish state and the Palestinian one. Israel can reach peace with the Arab world only after resolving the conflict with the Palestinians. The White House also made sure to add, “The president is personally committed to achieving a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.”

Two days earlier, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made it clear that he did not intend to carry out the division of real estate required to break with occupied Palestine. He is trying to convince the public that he can dance at two weddings — that he can approve the construction of a new West Bank settlement in territories designated for a future Palestinian state and be accorded a warm welcome in world capitals. At the embarrassing rally organized by Likud activists in support of the Netanyahus on Aug. 9, Netanyahu declared, “We have Dimona and we have Amona.” Netanyahu was responding to Labor chair Avi Gabbay's July 10 statement about the need to first take care of Dimona residents, meaning poor Israelis, before the Amona settlers. Dimona is an impoverished city in the heart of southern Israel, and Amona is the West bank settlement evacuated last February by court order. Chastising the media, Netanyahu added, “You recall that the fake news media repeats … that if we don’t withdraw from areas of our historical homeland we will be isolated, weakened and abandoned.” Instead, he boasted, Israel is enjoying an unprecedented “political prosperity” on all continents.

In a July 19 meeting with four Eastern Europe leaders, Netanyahu bragged that unlike the “crazy” behavior of Western Europe, which conditions its ties with Israel on progress in peace talks with the Palestinians, the Arabs “talk with us about technology and everything we’re talking about here.” True, Israeli defense officials, senior figures of the country’s weapons industry and cybersecurity experts secretly share intelligence and combat doctrine with colleagues from neighboring Arab states. However, the attitude of those states — among them Egypt and Jordan, which have peace treaties with Israel — are more like that of a married person and a lover: They satisfy each other’s needs but keep their relationship away from prying eyes.

Israel’s embassy in Cairo has been vacant for nine months. This is the longest period since the establishment of ties between the two countries in 1979 that the embassy — Israel's first in an Arab state — has been unstaffed. Israel’s embassy in Amman has also been abandoned since the clash over Jerusalem’s Temple Mount in July and the ensuing violence on July 23, in which an Israeli Embassy guard in Amman shot dead two Jordanians, one of whom tried to attack him. But even prior to that crisis, there had been a decline in the embassy’s public activity in Jordan. On Aug. 13 an Israeli security delegation arrived in Cairo, attempting to reach an arrangement with the Egyptians on security measures that would enable the reopening of the embassy. According to Ynet, the sides have reached understandings that will soon enable the return of Ambassador David Govrin to the Egyptian capital.