There is little doubt about the source of the leaks concerning Benjamin Netanyahu's pleas for a White House visit, or the cold shoulder he received in response. It is also clear who told reporters that the US administration did not want the visit and had rejected Netanyahu's requests for weeks.
In the end, Israel was required to pay an extraordinarily high price in Gaza before the president relented and graciously agreed to provide the Likud leader with election-campaign photographs in the Oval Office.
Yet just hours before the long-awaited visit, US President Donald Trump saw fit to serve up an appetizer of insults. He told reporters that he did not need "Bibi" to know what was happening in Iran, and that no one, meaning Netanyahu, would tell him whether to sell aircraft to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, his friend, despite the Turkish leader's virulent anti-Israel fixation.
The visit that Netanyahu intends to tout so proudly on the campaign trail thus became yet another link in the recent chain of humiliations directed at Israel's prime minister from the White House. It takes a profound lack of gratitude to treat the leader of a loyal ally such as Israel in this way. Israel has just fought shoulder to shoulder with US forces and remains a rare island of stability and friendship for the United States in the Middle East, and almost anywhere in the world.
The president, and even more so his vice president, are clearly behaving this way for personal and political reasons that deserve nothing but condemnation. But it must also be acknowledged that Benjamin Netanyahu's own conduct gives them ample reason to treat him with contempt. He does not respect himself or his country's interests.
Israel's interests, as well as our own dignity and Netanyahu's, required him not to travel to Washington at this time. There is no basis for the claim that a hollow, ceremonial, 80-minute meeting at the White House, attended by a broad forum of officials, was necessary to tell the Americans anything they did not already know about Iran.
New insights and strategic horizons are not conveyed in such a setting. The two sides have far better daily communication channels through which information can be shared and arguments made. A political virtuoso such as Donald Trump undoubtedly understood the meeting's true purpose: to serve the faltering election campaign Netanyahu has just launched and provide the false backdrop of a diplomatic achievement.
It is not that Trump objects to helping his friends electorally. He has previously mobilized to help Netanyahu escape the threat of Israeli justice, launching an aggressive and undiplomatic assault on Israel's president and legal system in an effort to secure a pardon for him. That is apparently the reward for someone willing to do anything for you, even when it conflicts with the interests of his own country.
Israel's interests now require Netanyahu to play a defensive game. The Americans are pressuring Israel on a series of fronts where their interests diverge from ours: Lebanon, Syria and Gaza, not to mention their approach toward hostile states such as Turkey and Qatar. Israel must refuse to make concessions and, above all, avoid exposing weaknesses and personal whims that would allow the president and his advisers to exert dangerous leverage over us.
Even had Netanyahu been invited to Washington rather than forcing his way in, he should at least have followed the example set by Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, who declined an invitation to visit Trump about a year ago. El-Sissi did not want to face overwhelming presidential pressure and be forced to surrender vital Egyptian interests.
Past experience requires Israelis to brace for impact whenever Netanyahu flies to Washington. From his office in Jerusalem, he does not dare utter a word of criticism against Trump or his advisers, even when they sign insane agreements with Iran. Once he reaches the Oval Office, he melts completely.
That is how Israel ended up with Netanyahu telephoning Qatar's leaders from Washington to apologize, as well as with the catastrophic 20-point agreement with Hamas. The agreement was signed on the spot at the White House without the Diplomatic-Security Cabinet or the government approving it, reviewing it or even being informed about it.
At this stage, it remains unclear what additional damage Netanyahu will bring back from his election-campaign photo tour in the US capital. What is already known, however, is that the price Netanyahu paid the Americans for his ticket to Washington has dealt Israel a strategic blow.
The delusional 20-point document Netanyahu signed did at least contain one safety valve: the disarmament of Hamas. Israel could argue that the clause requiring an international force to disarm Hamas allowed it to halt progress on every other aspect of the dangerous document until that impossible disarmament had been carried out. This week, Netanyahu abandoned that demand as well.
Foreign forces will now enter Gaza, making it more difficult for Israel to continue its current campaign to eradicate terrorism. A fictitious government of technocrats will be established in Gaza, staffed by Hamas' proxies. The reconstruction of Gaza's population centers will now begin, only for them to be handed back, ripe for the taking, to Hamas rule.
Once again this week, the citizens of Israel and the Gaza border communities were abandoned for the sake of election-campaign photographs.
