Warm words and empty gestures

When dealing with politicians, it’s important always to pay less attention to what they say than what they actually do — and also to what they choose not to say, which may provide a clue to their actions.

When US president Joe Biden arrived in Israel this week, he said he was proud that America’s relationship with Israel was “deeper and stronger, in my view, than it’s ever been” and told an Israeli interviewer that returning to Israel was “like going home”.

Biden’s feelings are doubtless genuine enough. Yet when Israel’s interim prime minister, Yair Lapid, called the US president “a great Zionist and one of the best friends Israel has ever known,” such fawning struck a false note given the unprecedented hostility towards Israel of parts of the Democratic party and Biden’s own administration.

The Democrats ferociously opposed the decision by former president Donald Trump to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a move that signalled America’s acceptance of Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel.

Last year, the Biden administration proposed to reopen America’s Jerusalem consulate as a de-facto mission to the Palestinians, thus indicating an implicit recognition of two states within the city.

It retreated in the face of ferocious Israeli opposition, although it upgraded the role of a viciously anti-Israel official to the role of Special Envoy to the Palestinians with a direct link to the State Department.

In Jerusalem, Biden’s itinerary was shaped to deliver a set of signals about the way his administration views Israel. And those signals were not good.