Wednesday, 18 August 2021 (YJC)_ Israeli Prime Minister first visit to the White House will come with President Biden attempting to manage the worst foreign policy crisis of his presidency.
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's first visit to the White House will come with President Biden attempting to manage the worst foreign policy crisis of his presidency.
Bennett is expected to visit next Thursday, according to U.S. officials, which will likely make him the first world leader to meet Biden during his "Saigon moment."
Israeli and U.S. officials initially tried to schedule the visit for July, but it was shifted to August due to Biden's schedule, Bennett's domestic political difficulties and rising COVID-19 cases.
Israeli officials are very concerned by the message the Afghanistan crisis sends about U.S. engagement in the broader region.
While the Israeli government has been careful not to criticize the Biden administration in public, privately, several senior Israeli officials have told me they were stunned by what they saw as a major U.S. intelligence failure.
Israeli officials hope the Afghanistan crisis will make the Biden administration rethink potentially pulling U.S. forces out of Iraq and Syria.
Two Israeli officials who requested anonymity because of the diplomatic sensitivities expressed the same sentiment: “The U.S. wants to disengage from the Middle East but finds out the Middle East is running after it."
Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz raised concerns about further U.S. withdrawal from the Middle East during an Aug. 6 phone call with U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, in which the Afghanistan pullout was briefly discussed, an Israeli official says.
Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu has openly criticized Biden's Afghanistan policy, writing on Facebook that in 2013, then-Secretary of State John Kerry invited him for a secret trip to Afghanistan to see how the U.S. has built the Afghan army to fight terrorism.
“The message was clear — the U.S. wanted to implement the Afghanistan model in the Palestinian file too," Netanyahu said, claiming he knew then that Afghanistan would collapse if the U.S. pulled out.
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