Laser beams, Saudis, and the “Jewish Olympics” on Biden’s itinerary

JTA – Joe Biden’s trip to Israel this week, his first as United States president, might look on paper like a quick stopover: just two days’ meeting with Israeli leaders and one day with Palestinian leaders.

But with a day in Saudi Arabia tacked on — a country that Biden once vowed to make a “pariah” in the region — the trip’s significance in a dramatically evolving Middle East becomes clearer.

While some predicted that Biden might unveil additional Arab countries that could join the Abraham Accords normalisation agreements with Israel during his much-anticipated trip, the president is now not expected to make any flashy announcements. Still, several of the trip’s elements underscore how US relations with Israel and its neighbours are changing and in some senses how Biden is trying to hold back some of those currents of change by advancing a two-state vision of peace.

For example, after dealing with former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for well over a decade and his fellow right-winger, Naftali Bennett, over the past year, Biden was greeted on his arrival on Wednesday, 13 July, by interim Prime Minister Yair Lapid, who represents a different slice of the Israeli political spectrum ahead of yet another election in the fall.

Biden will also spend time with the Palestinian Authority and its president, Mahmoud Abbas, at what is putting it lightly a low point in Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. He could become the first sitting US president to visit a part of Jerusalem outside of Israel’s pre-1967 state lines, excluding the Old City neighbourhood.

And Biden’s time in Saudi Arabia symbolises, among other things, that the US is putting aside its past misgivings to build stronger ties with the country that Israel has been cultivating as a regional ally against Iran.

Here’s a quick rundown of what to follow in Biden’s itinerary.

A new (interim) Israeli leader

After Naftali Bennett dissolved Israel’s government last month in the wake of a series of coalition defections, then Foreign Minister Yair Lapid took over as interim leader as per their coalition agreement. In a show of their ongoing closeness, Bennett will join part of Lapid’s formal sit-down with Biden on Thursday.

Before collapsing under the weight of its many parts, the Bennett-Lapid coalition mostly avoided hot-button topics such as the Israel-Palestinian conflict, preferring to prove after years of stalemate (the next will be the fifth elections in three years) how a Netanyahu alternative could operate. It also crucially avoided angering a Democratic US administration — something Netanyahu had done repeatedly as he focused on courting Republican leaders.

Bennett and Lapid agreed to disagree politely with Biden on issues such as the Iran nuclear deal — a pact widely reviled in Israel that Biden wants restored — and to keep big policy disagreements behind closed doors.

But Biden will also meet Netanyahu on Thursday, in part to avoid looking biased before the upcoming Israeli election.

Lapid, who will look to lead another winning coalition (Bennett is taking a break from politics) represents a different look at home compared to Netanyahu, especially on social and religious issues. He supports religious reform and promoting egalitarian prayer throughout Israel.

And on the world stage, on which Biden is more focused, Lapid also takes a slightly different tack than his immediate predecessors: tougher on Russian President Vladimir Putin and more open to dialogue with the Palestinians.

Real Jewish space lasers

In addition to the formal meetings, a key expected part of Biden’s visit with Israeli officials is his scheduled tour of an Israeli air force base. There, he will receive an update on the Iron Dome defence system, which the US gave an extra $500 million (R8.5 trillion) to replenish after Israel’s conflict with Gaza last year.

Hamas militants had begun to crack the code on how to overwhelm the Iron Dome during last year’s fighting. But worries about counter-missile supply could soon be a thing of the past, as Israel will introduce Biden to its still-developing “Iron Beam” system, which in testing has shown that it will likely be able to down missiles with laser beams.

History at the Maccabiah Games

The Maccabiah Games, often referred to as the Jewish Olympics since its founding in the 1930s, attracts thousands of Jewish athletes from dozens of countries, who compete in several Olympic sports. Biden — a huge sports fan — is about to give the Maccabiah a presidential-sized boost. Israeli media is reporting that he will interact with athletes at the Games’ opening ceremony on Thursday evening, probably the first-ever appearance by a US president at such an event.

A two-state solution comeback?

Last week, Lapid held a phone call with Mahmoud Abbas, his Palestinian Authority counterpart, who also hosted Defence Minister Benny Gantz at the PA president’s residence. It was the first time that a call between Abbas and an Israeli prime minister had been confirmed in years.

Biden has prioritised saving the two-state solution, and it will be telling to see if he uses that specific language on this trip. In a significant gesture, he will visit a hospital on Friday in largely Palestinian East Jerusalem, which Palestinians see as the capital of a future state. It could be the first visit to the area by a sitting US president.

Biden will then meet Abbas in Bethlehem, where he will announce a new slate of economic aid to the PA, according to Israeli officials, and a series of additional goodwill steps that Israel has agreed to take (such as allowing Palestinians to upgrade their broadband internet capabilities). That will mark a further break from the policies of Trump, who slashed US aid to the Palestinians by hundreds of millions of dollars and shuttered the US consulate in East Jerusalem.

Biden, who restored much of that funding, also supports reopening that consulate. But he will not announce any plans on that front during this trip.

A Saudi switch

The brutal death of Jamal Khashoggi, a journalist critical of Saudi Arabia’s government who the Central Intelligence Agency determined was killed in October 2018 at the behest of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, enraged and frightened Western powers. On the presidential campaign trail, Biden said if elected, he would make the Saudis “pay the price, and make them in fact the pariah that they are” in the Middle East.

But 2020 brought the advent of the Abraham Accords, a series of diplomatic normalisation agreements with Israel signed by some of its formerly antagonistic neighbours. Suddenly Israel and Saudi Arabia, two of the region’s strongest powers, both opposed to Iran’s increasing military aggression, began to see a path towards putting aside decades of mutual isolation.

Many commentators believe it’s only a matter of time before the Saudis join the Abraham Accords. US ambassador to Israel, Tom Nides, told Haaretz that no announcement would be made on Biden’s trip.

It’s unclear how or if Biden will discuss Israel and the Abraham-Accords issues on his stop in Saudi Arabia, as he will seek to focus on oil reserves with the goal of tackling high gas prices at home. Discussions about forming a military alliance of Arab states to counter Iran, which foments instability throughout the Middle East (and regularly calls for the violent destruction of Israel) seems more likely.

Published with permission from jta.org