“I have a pathology called Irish optimism, an oxymoron,” American President Joe Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But if we had met 10 years ago and started talking about normalization with Saudi Arabia, we probably would have looked at each other and thought, “What did we drink?”‘”. “Good Irish whiskey,” Netanyahu said quickly, smiling.
This exchange reflects the spirit of the meeting between Biden and Netanyahu on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly: cordial and constructive. The Israeli Prime Minister has been waiting to be received by the American President for 265 days. There hasn’t been such a bitter and long anteroom since 1964, Barak Ravid recalls on Axios. The meeting at the Intercontinental Hotel in New York started badly: Biden had to wait thirty minutes, but immediately after his arrival he told reporters that he expected Netanyahu in the White House within a year, which was also the case he wanted the Israeli Prime Minister expected and everything was more relaxed.
“I have a pathology called Irish optimism, an oxymoron,” American President Joe Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But if we had met 10 years ago and started talking about normalization with Saudi Arabia, we probably would have looked at each other and thought, “What did we drink?”‘”. “Good Irish whiskey,” Netanyahu said quickly, smiling.
This exchange reflects the spirit of the meeting between Biden and Netanyahu on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly: cordial and constructive. The Israeli Prime Minister has been waiting to be received by the American President for 265 days. There hasn’t been such a bitter and long anteroom since 1964, Barak Ravid recalls on Axios. The meeting at the Intercontinental Hotel in New York started badly: Biden had to wait thirty minutes, but immediately after his arrival he told reporters that he expected Netanyahu in the White House within a year, which was also the case he wanted the Israeli Prime Minister expected and everything was more relaxed.
The closed-door conversation took place according to the rules of two old friends rather than the formal rules of diplomacy, according to Israeli sources (Biden and Netanyahu have known each other for forty years), the American president indicated that he disagreed with the Israeli government’s methods of handling judicial reform and, more generally, the exercise of its power, but the Israeli prime minister listened , whether It is difficult to say whether this criticism will have any concrete impact. Also because The focus of the meeting was not on the internal situation in Israel. This helped not only lengthen wait times but also normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, a long-standing project that would essentially represent the culmination of the Abraham Accords introduced by the Trump administration. With these agreements, Israel has resumed contacts – and much more – with several countries in the Middle East and North Africa, but the ultimate goal has always been to include Riyadh, without which normalization cannot be described as complete or stable. An Israeli official said Netanyahu was much more optimistic about the deal with Saudi Arabia after the meeting: “It’s not a done deal and there are still a lot of variables that can change, but I would say that the chances that it comes to pass is higher than 50 percent,” the official said. Even the Saudi king, Mohammed bin SalmanIn his first interview with an American broadcaster (Fox News) since 2019, he said: “We are getting closer to the agreement every day.” In short, the prospect of normalizing relations has never seemed so attainable.
As we know, this is a particularly complex issue. Biden and Netanyahu – and also bin Salman publicly – focused on the situation posed by Riyadh and to some extent by Washington: that the agreement contains a “significant Palestinian component” (apparently the acronym: Scp already exists). Netanyahu said he agreed there was Palestinian involvement but did not want it to become a real right. The Palestinian Authority (PA) has sent a list of its conditions to Saudi Arabia – including: Concessions by Israel in the West Bank and recognition of the Palestinian state – But the fact that this document signed by Abu Mazen exists also shows a change in the Palestinian approach: until last year the PNA had been very critical of the countries that had signed the Abraham Accords, now it seems to be more pragmatic . Hussein al-Sheikh, Abu Mazen’s advisor who is leading the consultations with Riyadh, also meets regularly with American diplomats: There are many rough edges to smooth out, also because it is a “mega-agreement” of normalization, which has many implications, but it appears that a common direction has been identified. A survey conducted in August by the Washington Institute (they will send the methodology used for the survey upon request) is widely circulated among the diplomats gathered in the Glass Palace, saying A third of Saudi entrepreneurs would already like to do business with Israel, even if formal relations do not yet exist.