When President Joe Biden arrived Israel on Wednesday, he did something he had never done on a trip abroad: Embrace one of the achievements of his predecessor’s legacy. While most of his foreign travels in his first 18 months in office have focused on reversing the foreign policy of former President Donald Trump and sustaining a battered alliance, Biden on his first trip to the Middle East embraced the normalized Trump era Abraham Agreement relations between Israel and several Arab countries and pursuing the expansion of Arab-Israeli security growth and economic relations. Biden landed in Tel Aviv right after 8 am ET Wednesday and promised in his remarks at the arrival ceremony to deepen Israel’s relations with the US and with other countries in the region.
After arriving, Biden received briefing on the Iron Dome defense system and the next-generation, laser-enabled Iron Beam system on Wednesday. Later in the day, he visited Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem.
Ahead of the trip, US officials have worked to deepen Israeli-Arab security coordination and intermediary agreements that will make Israel and Saudi Arabia – which have no diplomatic relations – closer to normalization.
People who are aware of this problem say Saudi Arabia is expected to announce this week that it will allow all commercial flights to and from Israel to use its airspace and allow a Muslim minority of Israel to take charter flights directly to Saudi Arabia to participate in Hajj worship. Hajj to Mecca.
Biden will also fly directly to Saudi Arabia from Israel, a moment he calls “a small symbol of developing relations” between the two countries.
Biden’s senior administration official said full Saudi-Israel normalization remained out of reach, although secret coordination between the two countries had been expanded.
“This changes the security situation in the Middle East,” said a senior US official about the Abrahamic Agreement signed at the end of 2020. “Our task is to explore more countries that have registered and expanded it if we can.” The focus of the Biden government on expanding the normalization agreement between Israel and Arab countries has frustrated Palestinian officials who prefer the US focus to revive the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process. But US officials say their focus on Arab-Israeli normalization is recognition of reality in the region: Momentum to foster Arab-Israeli relations coupled with dead-end political conditions in Israel and the Palestinian territories. Two senior government officials said the government wanted to see a movement towards Israeli-Palestinian peace but said the White House had decided not to pursue the kind of high-level shuttle diplomacy that had been pursued by the previous government because of likely to fail.
“We are very careful in setting goals, especially in the Middle East. Where the government gets a big problem of promising the Moon and not being able to provide while wasting time, resources and investment, “said a senior government official. “If we launch the peace process, there will be no one at the table.” “If the parties are ready to talk, we will always be there to help, but we will not come out with some plans mandated from the top down and create expectations that cannot be met, “the official said.
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