On Monday, a photograph circulated of Naftali Bennett, Joe Biden, and Boris Johnson talking cordially at the climate-change summit in Glasgow—reportedly about their respective political situations. Bennett in fact arranged tête-à-têtes in Scotland not only with Johnson, but also with the leaders of France, Italy, India, Australia, Bahrain, and Honduras. But he had no such meeting with President Biden. While there could be any number of explanations for that, Benny Avni wonders if it reflects festering disagreements between the U.S. and Israel:
Despite Jerusalem’s praise of Mr. Biden’s friendship with the Jewish state, . . . a chill in relations with Washington is clearly in the air this fall. Secretary of State Antony Blinken . . . last week had a “tense” phone call with Israel’s defense minister, Benny Gantz, calling his approval of 2,800 new housing units inside existing Jewish settlements “unacceptable.” The content of the call was immediately leaked to Israeli and American reporters.
Washington had earlier frowned upon Mr. Gantz’s designation as terrorist six Palestinian Arab organizations affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Washington has long recognized the PFLP as a terrorist organization. Yet it insists the six groups are part of Palestinian “civil society” even as evidence of symbiotic ties between them and the terror organization is abundant.
Then there’s the push by the Biden administration to reopen an American consulate in Jerusalem to serve Palestinian Arabs. . . . Most ominously, Bidenites seem giddy for a return to the nuclear deal with Iran. Trying to smooth over disagreements, Biden and Bennett came up with a diplomatic formula most recently repeated by Blinken on the Sunday news shows. The formula reckons that everyone prefers diplomacy while vowing to prepare an unspecified “plan B” if talks collapse. Meantime, fuzzy diplomatic language rarely succeeds in hiding disagreements.
Read more on New York Sun: https://www.nysun.com/foreign/at-climate-summit-a-chill-breeze-from-biden/91711/