In pursuit of a majority, Bibi and Deri join forces
IT was one of the most expensive connecting flights in history. Former secretary of state Henry Kissinger said famously that “Israel has no foreign policy, only domestic policy,” but this time, the remark could be applied to the American president as well.
En route to Saudi Arabia on a desperate mission to bring down gas prices and rein in inflation, Biden dropped in on Israel. The royal treatment he received in the Holy Land was not replicated by the Saudis, nor did it await him on his return back home. As he met Yair Lapid on the red carpet, Biden could console himself with the reflection that the Israeli prime minister’s polling numbers were even lower than his own 33% approval rating, mere months from the midterm elections.
If the American president had stuck to his original schedule and arrived in June, he would have been greeted on the red carpet — as his host, not as just another dignitary — by then-prime minister Naftali Bennett, whose polling numbers were lower than the US inflation rate.
Biden’s Israeli hosts received the impression that the American president still has his hands on the wheel, but is running on his last drops of fuel. Some were reminded of the way late Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon staggered on before his collapse. But there was one thing no one disagrees about: The man is a mensch. On the political level, he treated opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu with respect (“You know I love you,” he was overheard telling Netanyahu as they shook hands), but much more importantly, he behaved the same way in his contacts with ordinary people.
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