Prime Minister Naftali Bennett left Tuesday afternoon for the United States, where he will meet President Joe Biden at the White House on Thursday. As we wish the prime minister a successful summit, we urge him and his aides to prepare thoroughly for the crucial talks – present Israel’s case clearly but respectfully, listen carefully to what the president has to say and avoid making mistakes.
Bennett learned a painful lesson on Sunday when he got mixed up in a telephone call with Yossi Shmueli over the name of his son, Border Policeman Barel Hadaria Shmueli, 21, who remains hospitalized in critical condition after being shot in the head on the Gaza border on Saturday. Bennett was forced to issue an apology, saying, “Switching Barel’s and his father’s names was done in innocence, and I would like to apologize for this from the bottom of my heart.”
The prime minister can’t afford to make any mistakes in his meeting with Biden. There is too much at stake. It is Bennett’s first official trip abroad, and the first time Biden is hosting an Israeli prime minister since taking office in January.
As Bennett himself acknowledged, despite the continuing COVID crisis in Israel, “the timing of the visit is very important because we are at a critical point regarding Iran.”
At the cabinet meeting on Sunday, Bennett said he would present Biden with “an orderly plan that we have formulated in the past two months to curb the Iranians, both in the nuclear sphere and vis-à-vis regional aggression.”
“I will tell President Biden that it is time to stop the Iranians, to stop this thing, not to give them a lifeline in the form of reentering into an expired nuclear deal,” he said. “[The 2015 deal] is no longer relevant, even by the standards of those who once thought that it was.”
He explained that the Iranians are “advancing rapidly with uranium enrichment and have already significantly shortened the time that it would take for them to accumulate the material required for a single nuclear bomb.”
Like his predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu, Bennett has consistently opposed the Biden administration’s plan to reenter the Iran deal, from which then-US president Donald Trump withdrew in 2018. Western powers held lengthy negotiations with Iran in Vienna earlier this year, but the talks stalled ahead of the inauguration of Ebrahim Raisi as Iran’s president earlier this month.
Netanyahu angered former president Barack Obama in 2015 when he delivered his controversial speech to a joint session of Congress in an attempt to torpedo the Iran deal.
Bennett needs to learn from this and make sure not to take similar steps that would be seen as an insult to the White House.
This is a unique opportunity to strengthen the US-Israel relationship and establish trust between the two leaders. Disagreements are legitimate, but they should be discussed quietly behind closed doors and not loudly in public.
Support for Israel in Washington DC has been traditionally bipartisan, and Bennett should do his utmost to avoid a political polarization of the Iranian issue in the US. It should also be noted that although the prime minister has stressed that the summit will focus on Iran, a White House statement said Biden and Bennett would discuss “regional and global security, including Iran” as well as “efforts to advance peace, security, and prosperity for Israelis and Palestinians and the importance of working towards a more peaceful and secure future for the region.”
The summit’s success will certainly impact Bennett’s planned meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel after he returns to Israel, as well as his upcoming trip to Egypt for talks with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
It is important that Biden is able to openly display his friendship and support for the State of Israel while acknowledging that the two countries can disagree on some of the issues like Iran or steps needed to advance a resolution to the conflict with the Palestinians. And it is equally important for Bennett to follow suit and show the world that Washington has no stronger ally than Israel.