Posted on 06/25/22
| News Source: i24
Biden will have to navigate a potential political minefield following the collapse of Naftali Bennett's government, as each meeting could be spun to imply an endorsement ahead of Israel's fifth election in three years.
The US leader shares a checkered history with Netanyahu, part of the latter's famously fractured relationship with former US president Barack Obama, whose deputy Biden was between 2008 and 2016.
In fact, the very possibility of a meeting with Netanyahu was cited as a possible pretext for Biden calling off the visit that is coinciding with a patch of uncertainty and instability in Israeli politics; yet according to the Hebrew-language Walla News website, Biden will confer with both the centrist Lapid and the right-wing Netanyahu.
Biden will travel from July 13 to 16 to Israel, the West Bank and to a regional meeting in Saudi Arabia.
Lapid is set to take charge as prime minister of a caretaker government, in accordance with a power-sharing deal he reached with Bennett after 2021 elections, when the pair forged an alliance of ideological rivals united in their desire to oust Netanyahu.