On June 18, the State Department declared that it is “deeply troubled” by Jerusalem’s decision to allow the construction of 4,000 new housing units in the West Bank. It appears that some or all of these units will be built outside the major settlement blocs, a deviation from Prime Minister Netanyahu’s longstanding policy preference. Elliott Abrams comments:

Why would Netanyahu agree to this? Because the far-right parties representing the settlers have more power in his government today than they have ever had before. Or to put that equation backwards, because Netanyahu is weaker than he was previously.

That brings me to the Netanyahu invitation to visit the White House. Presumably the Biden administration believes it is achieving something important by refusing to invite Netanyahu. What it is actually achieving, however, is to weaken him against those in the governing coalition who seek the kinds of things the Biden administration opposes—judicial reform and settlement expansion. The White House is thereby truly biting its nose to spite its face—weakening Netanyahu to somehow punish him and thereby leading to exactly the results it least wants. On these issues of settlement expansion and judicial reform, Netanyahu has long been a moderating force. Weakening him aids more extreme voices.

Perhaps denying him an invitation gives the president and White House staff some personal satisfaction, but doing so undermines U.S. policy goals. It’s a foolish, even childish, position, and reversing it will advance administration policy. It is remarkable that administration “experts” on Israel don’t or won’t see that.

While conventional wisdom in the Western press believes that the war with Hamas has left Jerusalem more isolated and scuttled chances of expanding the Abraham Accords, Gabriel Scheinmann points to a very different reality. He begins with Iran’s massive drone and missile attack on Israel last month, and the coalition that helped defend against it:

America’s Arab allies had, in various ways, provided intelligence and allowed U.S. and Israeli planes to operate in their airspace. Jordan, which has been vociferously attacking Israel’s conduct in Gaza for months, even publicly acknowledged that it shot down incoming Iranian projectiles. When the chips were down, the Arab coalition held and made clear where they stood in the broader Iranian war on Israel.

The successful batting away of the Iranian air assault also engendered awe in Israel’s air-defense capabilities, which have performed marvelously throughout the war. . . . Israel’s response to the Iranian night of missiles should give further courage to Saudi Arabia to codify its alignment. Israel . . . telegraphed clearly to Tehran that it could hit precise targets without its aircraft being endangered and that the threshold of a direct Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear or other sites had been breached.

The entire episode demonstrated that Israel can both hit Iranian sites and defend against an Iranian response. At a time when the United States is focused on de-escalation and restraint, Riyadh could see quite clearly that only Israel has both the capability and the will to deal with the Iranian threat.

It is impossible to know whether the renewed U.S.-Saudi-Israel negotiations will lead to a normalization deal in the immediate months ahead. . . . Regardless of the status of this deal, [however], or how difficult the war in Gaza may appear, America’s Arab allies have now become Israel’s.