FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
JERUSALEM – The first time Joe Biden lands in Israel is the summer of 1973, there are 43 days until the Yom Kippur conflict, the war seems far away – few expect it, almost none of the Israeli leaders see it ahead – and Benjamin Netanyahu made it. Returning flight A few months earlier he had returned to the USA after his military service, an architecture student at MIT in Boston. The then US Senator, who is making his debut in politics, is received by Golda Meir, who says he will remember the cigarettes that the Prime Minister smoked one after the other and “one of the most important moments of my life”.
He often returned to the country, shook hands with Yitzhak Rabin twice (1977, 1992) in Jerusalem, met all the prime ministers and found dialogue with almost all of them.
Bibi knows that Joe knows him well. Sometimes the reproaches of an old confidante are more annoying than the threats of a new enemy. When the president admonished him – “It can’t go on like this, I hope you’re really trying to find a compromise” – the Israeli prime minister replies, piqued: “We are a sovereign country that makes decisions according to the will of the people and not under pressure from abroad, not even from best friends».
Tensions are becoming public and Biden is personally extending – “it won’t happen soon” – the times of Netanyahu’s visit to Washington, never in the five previous terms as head of government has he had to wait so long for an invitation to the White House. Diplomatic maneuvers are narrowing and despite his ministers’ brazen tones towards Israel’s most powerful ally – “We are not another star on the flag of the United States,” extremist Itamar Ben Gvir attacks – the conservative leader he knows has the special relationship can’t give up.
The three-month protests against the government’s announced justice plan – for the opposition it is an anti-democratic coup, an authoritarian turn to subject the judiciary to executive control – are already threatening the effectiveness of the armed forces. The refusal to show up to train reserve pilots in Squadron 69 — they operate the latest F-15 jets — is complicating preparations for a possible attack on Iran’s nuclear centers, a project the prime minister reiterates has never been put on hold laid. Netanyahu sees it as his life’s work to prevent the ayatollahs from arming themselves with the nuclear bomb, loyalists say he’s holed up because he’s convinced the corruption trial is a judicial frame-up to get rid of it, he wants to stay on of power because only he “can protect Israel from the existential threat”.
But without the logistical support of the American Air Force, without the diplomatic and military protection guaranteed by Biden, a possible bombing raid is considered impossible by the General Staff. Bibi knows. He must be able to make sense of even the cronies in the governing coalition among those who accuse the US President of unacceptable interference or rant about US aid by announcing that Israel can forgo it.
And he has to hope that he calculated correctly: “Wait for 2024 and the new president,” his parents say. “Biden is weak.”