On June 16, 1974, about eight months after the guns ceased to thunder in the Yom Kippur War and the fierce campaign came to an end, an American president landed on Israeli soil for the first time in the history of the "special relationship" between Washington and Jerusalem.
Biden in historic speech: "We stand with Israel!"
It was Richard Nixon who came to the region to demonstrate the success of American diplomacy in laying the groundwork for the reshaping of the Middle East under its leadership. Egypt under Sadat's leadership made no secret of its intentions to defect from the Soviet sphere of influence and join the American superpower.
Alongside this core goal, the precedent-setting visit was accompanied by an important political goal, anchored in the president's desperate efforts to prevent his impeachment (in the wake of the Watergate scandal) by means of a triumphant march through the streets of Cairo, Alexandria and Damascus. Despite the impressive success of the trip (especially to Pyramid Land), Nixon was forced to resign in disgrace less than two months after his return to the American capital.
History repeats. Kissinger, photo: Archive: AP
Today, five decades after that tectonic rift that struck the Israeli nation and its leaders on October 6, 1973, an American president is once again landing on the Holy Land in a precedent-setting manner. This is the first time the occupant of the White House has visited the scene in the midst of the fighting: Biden arrived in Ukraine for a solidarity visit only a year after the Russian invasion, and he will visit Israel less than two weeks after the beginning of the crisis from the south.
There is no doubt that the timing of the current trip to the Middle East requires explanation, as it is a departure from an entrenched American pattern of conduct. Moreover, the presidential decision-making system usually operates according to meticulous and orderly planning and not through improvisations and last-minute standard deviations.
A sign thanking President Biden,
The question therefore arises: What motivated the president to shift the steering wheel of the presidential plane from calm Colorado to the Middle East, saturated with violence and blood?
Prevent theater confrontation
An examination of the issue in light of three different analytical complexes may shed light on the roots and essence of this decision. The first circle is the American-Israeli complex. On this level, the urgent visit stems from the prevailing feeling among "all the president's men," according to which an eclipse has befallen the Israeli leadership in general, and the top of the governmental pyramid in particular, following the painful collapse of the longstanding strategic concept of ties to Hamas.
Palestinian demonstrators in Nablus carrying Hamas flags after the explosion at a hospital in Gaza, photo: AFP
In light of what appears in Washington to be nothing less than the collapse of Israel's governance system, and the resulting fear of adventurous moves aimed at rehabilitating Netanyahu's sinking status, Biden is determined to ensure that the Israeli ship sails to a safe shore, and does not run aground in a high-risk escalation.
In order to advance this goal and prevent the realization of the nightmare of an all-out arena (and perhaps global) conflict, a whole web of confidence-building measures was woven into the visit: immediate supply of essential weapons and comprehensive aid packages through an accelerated legislative process; A demonstration of support and sweeping identification with Israel, along with projecting strength and deterrence capability in the form of aircraft carriers. These are all part of a well-defined American strategy.
The war will continue for a long time. Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, photo: AFP
The main objective of this policy is to calm the leaders of the Israeli partner and persuade them to place their trust in the American hegemon, thus enabling American policymakers to take an active part in formulating and implementing an outline that will work to topple and uproot the Hamas regime from Gaza, but without leading to the opening of a full-scale second front in the north and to the shelving, at least in the short term, of the normalization outline between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Again the melody returns. As in the Yom Kippur War, the fact that Israel now desperately needs extensive American military (and political) assistance now gives its patron a particularly wide margin of maneuver.
Biden and Netanyahu, Photo: Reuters
Just as then, when the 1973 airlift enabled Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to exert effective pressure on Golda Meir's government, including preventing it from subduing the besieged Third Army and forcing it to open a "humanitarian corridor," so too is the White House working today to turn growing Israeli dependence into a powerful lever that will exert greater influence on Israel's moves. It is a kind of loving, caressing hug, which soon turns into a coveting and blocking bear hug.
The current White House seeks to operate within multilateral frameworks and broad consensus alliances. He is sensitive to the humanitarian consequences of massive Israeli operations in Gaza, which will hamper his plan to establish a moderate and broad Sunni coalition in the region. As in '73, this administration does not hesitate to take strong measures of persuasion against Israel in order to delimit its actions and minimize the danger of harm to American interests.
Richard Nixon in Israel, Photo: Yaakov Saar/GPO
And finally, the third circle. In 1974, when President Nixon landed in Israel, his face was on the domestic American front, where he pinned his (failed) hopes of being saved by his impressive successes in the Middle East. While Biden is not in similar danger of impeachment, the political context of his presence in the region and his efforts to project leadership is clear.
In a year's time, early voting for the November 2024 presidential election will begin. For Biden, who continues to stagger in opinion polls, the current crisis provides a window of opportunity and a springboard to extricate himself from his electoral predicament.
Aircraft carrier Eisenhower (archive). Unprecedented US aid, photo: AFP
The coming days will prove whether he has succeeded in achieving his goals in all three complexes. This, of course, is a weighty task, requiring diplomatic acrobatics by Henry Kissinger.
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