Bibi-sitting?

Are Washington’s top officials flying to Israel for “Bibi-sitting”? That seems to be the chattering classes’ favorite new pun. First President Trump completed an impressive Knesset speech and a Sharm el-Sheikh regional summit. Vice President Vance then visited Israel this week. Once he departed, Secretary Marco Rubio arrived. All three lauded Israel, but those in the know asserted that their real aim was to ensure that the Jewish state won’t do anything crazy. In 1981, Prime Minister Menachem Begin angrily reacted to a spat with the Reagan administration. “Are we a vassal state of yours?” he asked. “Are we a banana republic? Are we 14-year-olds who, if we misbehave, we get our wrists slapped?” Now Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s critics claim that his bond with Mr. Trump has tied Israel into a hopeless dependency and that it can no longer make a move unless the White House approves it. Bolstering the notion that America’s most prominent policy makers are visiting Israel to save Mr. Netanyahu from himself was this week’s Knesset bill to apply Israeli law at Judea and Samaria. “If it was a political stunt, it is a very stupid one, and I personally take some insult to it,” Mr. Vance said Thursday as he departed from Ben Gurion airport. Asked about annexation, Mr. Trump too was indignant. “It won’t happen,” he told Time magazine. “I gave my word to the Arab countries, and you can’t do that now,” the president added. “Israel would lose all of its support from the United States if that happened.” He is right. It will not happen. At least not now. There is a long road from a bill’s first reading, approved Wednesday with only 49 of the Knesset’s 120 members in attendance, to an actual law. No Likud member voted. Mr. Netanyahu called it a “provocation” hatched by his political rivals. What if rather than scolding Israel, the president, the veep, and the secretary flew over to bask in Israel’s successes during a two-year war? Mr. Trump deservedly takes great pride in degrading Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Beating the Middle East “bully,” he told Time, paved the way to the Gaza cease-fire deal. Would he have dispatched B-2s, though, if Israel hadn’t first wreaked havoc on the Islamic Republic and eliminated its air defenses?Mr. Trump’s main Mideast task now seems to be the expansion of the Abraham Accords. He told Time that by the end of the year he believes Riyadh will normalize relations with Jerusalem. Yet Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotritch, said Thursday that the Saudis can “keep riding camels.” Mr. Netanyahu is just as eager to widen the peace circle as Mr. Trump is. He forced Mr. Smotritch to retract the statement. Is there a great chasm between America and Israel, and is it forcing Mr. Trump to dispatch his top aides to Jerusalem? “We don’t want a client state, and that’s not what Israel is,” Mr. Vance said. “We want a partnership. We want an ally here.” Mr. Rubio wrote that he came to “reaffirm America’s unwavering commitment to Israel’s security” and advance “durable peace and integration in the Middle East.” Bibi needs no sitter.__________________Correction: B-2s were dispatched to target Iran’s nuclear facilities. An earlier version misstated the designation of the aircraft.

Bibi-sitting?

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