Israel’s Bennett, Amid Afghan Fiasco, Suddenly Holds a Strong Hand in Dealing With Biden

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While North Atlantic Treaty allies can hardly hide their anger over President Biden’s Afghanistan fiasco, a Mideast friend rides to the rescue. Will Prime Minister Bennett use a chummy White House photo op Thursday as leverage?

A date was finally set recently for the long-awaited first meeting between Messrs. Biden and Bennett — just as the full scale of America’s self-inflicted Afghanistan woes started to emerge. And European allies that helped America’s war on terror started to make their unhappiness heard.

They feel betrayed by a president who failed to consult, or even inform, them on his withdrawal plans. German, French, and British officials or parliamentarians publicly air out their growing frustrations. Prime Minister Boris Johnson pleaded that less than the few days left in the month couldn’t suffice for already Herculean evacuation efforts.

Yet earlier today Mr. Biden declined to tweak his arbitrary August 31 deadline to “end endless wars.” So what’s better for a president, who has famously promised to repair America’s global alliances, than a friendly face on a Washington visit to discuss global topics that have little, if any, to do with Afghanistan?

Departing from Ben Gurion Airport earlier today, Mr. Bennett praised Mr. Biden’s friendship and said Iran would top the agenda in their White House meeting. A premier from Israel’s hawkish right, Mr. Bennett nevertheless presides over a coalition of disparate political leanings.

Like his top partner, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, the prime minister has promised to repair relations with, in America, Israel’s most important ally, now run by a Democratic Party whose prominent members have been increasingly siding with Palestinians or Jewish leftists who blame Israel for various Mideast, and even global, woes.

Back home, terrorists operating from Gaza are, to an unprecedented degree, using incendiary weapons to set Israeli fields on fire, culminating this week in a near fatal shooting of an Israeli soldier by an armed Hamas operator. The incident is dominating the Hebrew press, where full scale violent clashes on Israel’s southern border may well eclipse Thursday’s chummy scenes from Washington.

If so, the Gaza terrorists will be acting on behalf of their Tehran benefactors that hope to weaken the American-Israeli alliance. Which brings us back to the most important topic on Mr. Bennett’s agenda: Iran and America’s desire to renew the failed 2015 nuclear deal.

In recent days Mr. Biden’s point man on Iran, Robert Malley, certainly no friend of Israel, has expressed doubts that talks in Vienna would lead to renewal of the deal, which consists of a series of articles of appeasement. Iranian negotiators are demanding explicit guarantee that no future American president would drop the deal, as Donald Trump did.

It would be unconstitutional for an American president to ink a deal that restricts a future president from the ability to freely use his constitutional powers. Tehran’s new government, meanwhile, has also rebuffed America’s wish to renegotiate some of the deal’s weak points.

While most Israeli officials recognize those weaknesses — the deal is set to gradually phase out nuclear restrictions, culminating by their complete removal by the end of the decade — Mr. Bennett has vowed not to express those reservations in a confrontational manner.

Messrs. Bennett and Lapid say publicly confronting America is foolhardy, as Israel depends on it for military and diplomatic support. Yet in the aftermath of the catastrophe in Kabul, as Afghan allies, and even Americans, seem desperately stranded, a reliance on America seems much less attractive than in the past.

Add to that Mr. Biden’s loneliness on the world stage, which affords him little opportunity to lecture Israel on perceived failings. To paraphrase Mr. Biden’s nominee for ambassador to Japan, Rahm Immanuel, no Washington crisis should go to waste. It turns out that Mr. Bennett’s leverage is now greater than it was a few weeks ago, when he was still begging the White House to schedule a meeting.

After Afghanistan, it’s hard to imagine that any Israeli leader could agree to inform America in advance of its military activity against Iran, as some in Washington demand. As the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Mark Dubowitz writes, maintaining Israel’s military independence also benefits America, which sometimes needs to plausibly deny complicity in its ally’s actions.

Mostly, Mr. Bennett is in a position to air Israel’s reservations about Mr. Biden’s Iran policies. He can be polite about it, and there’s no need to contradict the president in public. He can, though, stay firm in private negotiations, where he could even offer to Mr. Biden Jerusalem’s full public support in return for American change on policies that pose existential danger to Israel.

An ironically-intended 1980s tee shirt, “Don’t worry, America, Israel is behind you,” now appears less of a gag. Mr. Biden’s political and diplomatic weakness could position an Israeli premier in the rare role of white knight riding to save America’s badly wounded global prestige.

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Twitter @bennyavni


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