Herb Keinon
Jerusalem Post, Mar. 22, 2022
“Israel’s leader met with the ad hoc head of the United Arab Emirates to coordinate policy and positions at a time when UAE-US relations are not exactly soaring. Or, as UAE Ambassador to Washington Yousef al Otaiba recently put it, when relations between the two countries are undergoing a “stress test.””
Israel’s policy towards Russia and the Ukraine crisis is a high-wire acrobatic act: trying to balance principles on one hand and interests on the other; doing right by the Ukrainians without inciting Moscow’s anger – an anger that could trigger Russian actions that might significantly harm Israeli security.
But this acrobatic act is not the only one Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is engaged in, as borne out by his trilateral meeting in Sharm e-Sheikh Tuesday with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (MBZ).
There, too, Bennett is walking a tightrope between wanting to solidify relations with regional powers deeply disappointed by a US desire to enter a new nuclear deal with Iran at seemingly any cost, and not wanting to go overboard and incite Washington’s anger – an anger that could trigger US actions that harm Israeli interests.
Why should the US look askance at such a summit?
First of all, because it took place five days after MBZ hosted none other than Syria’s President Bashar Assad in Abu Dhabi, the first visit by Assad to an Arab country since the civil war began in Syria in 2011, and part of an apparent effort to bring him back into the embrace of the Arab world.
State Department Spokesman Ned Price said the US was “profoundly disappointed and troubled by this apparent attempt to legitimize” Assad. And that invitation came just a day after the United Arab Emirates foreign minister went to Moscow to meet with his Russian counterpart.
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