Bibi moves to avoid being wrong-footed
DONALD TRUMP’S diehard supporters in the US are still fighting a rearguard battle against last week’s election results but one of his closest allies has already conceded. Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu waited until Sunday morning Israeli time so he could be sure that the outgoing president was asleep in Washington before tweeting his congratulations to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
The banner of his twitter account still featured a photograph of him together with Mr Trump.
Mr Netanyahu is worried. The outgoing president has ten more weeks during which he won’t be content to be the traditional lame duck and then Mr Netanyahu has the Biden
Vadministration to look forward to. In a stormy Knesset session on Tuesday afternoon, in which opposition leader Yair Lapid accused him of having ruined Israel’s relationship with the Democratic Party, the prime minister tried to walk back the last four years and present himself as a practitioner of bipartisanship.
“Every time I’m at the Capitol I meet with the leadership of both parties,” he insisted. “Republicans and Democrats. There’s no difference. I see a huge importance in explaining Israel’s policies to both sides of the House.”
He rolled off a list of names of Democrat senators and congress members whom he had met during their visits to Israel in recent years, including Vice President-elect Harris.
Vice President-elect Kamala Harris wit h Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem in 2017
Mr Netanyahu may be about to reinvent himself as a bi-partisan but some of his own outriders and media proxies are still pinning their hopes on the conspiracy theory of massive voter fraud. Throughout the week they were feverishly repeating in television and radio studios and on social media the latest rumours and inventions on stolen votes in Pennsylvania.
Early on in 2020, Mr Netanyahu still believed the president would win a second term. To create some space around the crowded cabinet table and placate a potential Likud troublemaker, he convinced public security minister Gilad Erdan to accept the double role of Israel’s ambassador to the UN in New York and to the US in Washington (the only other time an Israeli ambassador filled both posts simultaneously was Abba Eban in the 1950s). The prime minister reckoned that since he had a direct line to the White House anyway, he could allow himself a part-time ambassador.
He now rues that decision. Shortly after Mr Erdan left for New York (he started at the UN and will be adding Washington to his portfolio in a few weeks) Mr Netanyahu became convinced that Mr Trump, whose polling tumbled as Covid-19 swept the US would lose.
The current ambassador, his closest advisor, Ron Dermer — who had excellent contacts in the Trump White House — is finally coming home after seven and a half years and Mr Netanyahu will be left without a trusted pair of eyes and ears in what is about to become a much less hospitable foreign
capital for him.
“Erdan is going to divide his time between two cities and will therefore be much less effective,” says one senior Israeli diplomat.
“He also lacks any experience in the American political scene and is tainted in the eyes of many Democrats by being a former Likud minister.
“And on top of it all, he doesn’t even enjoy Netanyahu’s confidence since it was on his watch as public security minister that the police launched the corruption investigations against him.”
Normally an Israeli prime minister could expect to meet an incoming US president soon after the inauguration. This time it is unlikely to happen. Mr Biden is extremely careful with Covid-19 precautions and will severely limit the number of meetings with foreign leaders. In a usual year, there are multiple opportunities for visits to Washington, during AIPAC or JFNA conferences or UN general assemblies and since the prime minister is already there, it’s hard for the White House to deny him a meeting without there being talk of a major crisis in the strategic relationship.
None of these events are
happening due to the pandemic.
Even the timing of the first congratulatory phone call to Mr Biden is fraught with sensitivities. A chat would usually be high on the list but this time he is anxious not to anger the outgoing president. Nor does Mr Biden seem in a rush.
Meanwhile, the Trump team is putting on a show of business as usual. Next week Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will be visiting Israel along with Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Mr Pompeo’s main mission is to ramp up the already heavy sanctions on Iran, in the hope that they will make it even more difficult for the next administration to rejoin the nuclear agreement that Mr Trump withdrew from in 2018.
Mr Netanyahu shares that mission but it will be an extremely awkward meeting for him, greeting in Jerusalem the man who this week denied the election result and said that there will be “a smooth transition to a second Trump administration.”
Normally an Israeli PM would meet an incoming president’