Several days after Prime Minister Naftali Bennett formed his government, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid boasted that he had already had two phone calls with Secretary of State Atony Blinken. In the readout, buried in the regular words about "mutual dialogue and respect" there was also Lapid's commitment to "zero surprises."
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter
This amateurism is perhaps what Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked meant when she spoke about "diplomatic self-sabotage" in the hot-mike moment that had her badmouthing on her own colleagues in the government.
It can be seen in the opening acts the government pursued with Jordan, Egypt and even Russia. A very narrow, even childish understanding of international relations through the prism of smiles and hugs, was cast as a fresh start. The talk of change and healing they would bring was then adopted in the government's rhetoric overseas. The era of publicly opposing the US policy on Iran is over. This apriori surrender led to a new equation in which on the one hand the US government has been showing weakness all around in every possible theater in the region and is all-too-eager to re-enter the Iran nuclear deal, and on the other hand there is a highly aggressive Iran that has been setting tough conditions to revive the deal by lifting all sanctions and recognizing it as a nuclear threshold state.
Over the past several days the government tried to create another charade: a spat with the US. It made sure, through background briefings and open statements, to convey the message that Israel was preparing for a new military conflict with Iran. But the fact that three such efforts to launch an attack on Iran under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been derailed by internal Israeli forces, suggests that the likelihood of such statements being put into action is inversely proportional to their level of publicity.
Netanyahu has done his utmost to prevent the nuclear deal from being finalized in 2015. At the height of his campaign, which included maximum pressure on both the international stage and within the US, he spoke before a joint meeting of Congress. The value of the speech was not just in the fiery rhetoric and the standing ovations but also in the fact that Israel was willing to stand up so forcefully to such an agreement and would not compromise on its own national security interests. In the short term, then-President Obama had to deal with a contrarian Congress, but in the long haul, the persistent Israeli efforts led to a tectonic shift in the world of diplomacy and to the Abraham Accords.
Not only has Bennett's soft rhetoric against the US a far cry from Netanyahu's combative stance at the time, there is a good reason to believe that Bennett will continue to go soft as the Iran talks continue full swing. Netanyahu's efforts against Iran were very much like Churchill's stance against the Nazis. Both leaders had realized early on what the threat the two regimes posed and in both cases, had there been international support to their insight, a major calamity could have been averted. In every step along the way, be it in the speech to Congress and the US withdrawal from the nuclear deal, a unified Israel front could have been formed, but instead, the internal opposition engaged in amateurism.
Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!
