Biden will land at Ben Gurion Airport on Wednesday afternoon, where he will be greeted by Prime Minister Yair Lapid in an official welcome ceremony. While Lapid may only be interim prime minister and met Biden only once in 2013, he will seek to build relations with the US president in order to strengthen his bona fide policy ahead of the Nov. 1 election. Biden will then tour several Israeli security installations with Defense Minister Benny Gantz, likely at Palmachim Air Base in central Israel, near the airport. The show-and-tell will include an Iron Dome missile defense battery, in a nod to US efforts to grant Israel an additional $500 million in replacement batteries for the system after last year’s Gaza war. Biden’s tour will include the Iron Beam laser missile defense system, which is designed to work alongside systems like Iron Dome and shoot down smaller missiles. Get The Times of Israel Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories By signing up, you agree to the terms The president will also announce his approval for the US military-industrial complex to begin talks with Israeli counterparts about the Iron Beam purchase, a senior US official told The Times of Israel on Wednesday. While there have been reports of efforts to create a comprehensive air defense network for Israel to work with its Arab allies against Iran, the senior US official said the initiative is still in the works, but that Biden will take a look at some of the technologies Israel exports to some of its regional allies in a “nod” to such cooperation. After the weapons tour, Biden will head to the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum for a short tour. Biden prides himself on promoting Holocaust education and often notes his decision to take each of his children to concentration camps in Germany when they were teenagers to learn firsthand the horrors of Nazi genocide. The ‘Iron Beam’ laser-based air defense system is seen during a test in southern Israel, March 2022. (Ministry of Defense) On Thursday morning, Biden will meet with Lapid, after which the two will make statements to the press. Also part of that meeting will be Lapid’s predecessor, Deputy Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who met twice with Biden during his year as prime minister. No major announcement is expected from either side. Biden is set to save most of his remarks on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for his meeting Friday with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Biden and Lapid will then be connected to computers for a high-level meeting of the new I2U2 forum with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and United Arab Emirates President Mohammed bin Zayed. The leaders will discuss “the food security crisis and other areas of cooperation across hemispheres where the UAE and Israel serve as important innovation hubs,” a senior Biden official said last month. Biden will then meet with President Isaac Herzog, followed by a brief meeting with opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, which was added to the schedule last month to avoid the perception that the US is choosing sides ahead of Israel’s Nov. 1 election. . Biden has known the Likud leader for decades, but the two have clashed politically, particularly during the Obama administration when Biden was vice president. Last year, Netanyahu released a video mocking Biden, repeating a debunked claim that the US leader fell asleep during a previous meeting with Bennett at the White House. The president will conclude the day by speaking at the opening ceremony of the Maccabiah Jewish Olympics alongside Lapid and Herzog. On Friday morning, Biden will head to Augusta Victoria Hospital on East Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives, according to an Israeli source familiar with the matter. It will be the first visit by a sitting US president to the predominantly Palestinian part of the capital outside the Old City. Dr. Jill Biden, wife of then-US Vice President Joseph Biden, is seen with Palestinian patients during a visit to Augusta Victoria Hospital in East Jerusalem on March 10, 2010. (AP/Menahem Kahana, Pool) First Lady Jill Biden visited the same hospital in 2010 and announced the donation of new equipment for the oncology ward. The move is seen as a nod to the Palestinians, who see the area as the capital of their future state. Perhaps for that reason, Israeli officials sought to join Biden on the visit, the Israeli source said. The hospital network is not officially run by the Palestinian Authority and works with Israeli health providers, but also plays a key role in the Palestinian health care system. Much of the network’s operating budget comes from treating Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza, for which the Palestinian Authority foots the bill. The Biden administration will use the opportunity to announce a major funding initiative for the East Jerusalem Hospital Network when Biden visits one of the hospitals next Friday, a senior Israeli official said, adding that the initiative was promoted by US Ambassador to Israel Tom Naides. In addition to the new US funding, Biden will announce similar donations to the hospital network from several Gulf countries, a Middle East diplomat said. Biden will then travel to Bethlehem for a meeting with Abbas. The atmosphere may be clouded by Monday’s announcement by the US that it did not find Israel intentionally killed Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in clashes that erupted during an IDF raid on Jenin on May 11. The announcement came after a forensic analysis of the fatal bullet that was completed was too damaged to make a definitive conclusion about who was responsible, the State Department said, sparking outrage from Ramallah, which insists the Palestinian-American journalist was killed. deliberately by Israel. However, Biden will announce together with Abbas a package of steps aimed at strengthening the Palestinian Authority, the senior US official said. Some of these “deliverables” will be US initiatives and others will be Israeli ones that Biden will announce on behalf of Lapid, who prefers to keep some distance from concessions. Among the US gestures is one related to the Palestinian economy that Ramallah has long sought, the official said, declining to elaborate as the matter is still being finalized. Then-U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden, left, walks with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas before their meeting in the West Bank city of Ramallah on March 10, 2010. (AP/Tara Todras-Whitehill/File) Biden will then return to Ben Gurion Airport, where he will take a rare direct flight to Saudi Arabia to attend Saturday’s GCC+3 summit in Jeddah with the leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman , Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE along with Iraq, Egypt, and Jordan. In an initiative it hopes to solidify before the president lands, the US is working to finalize the transfer of a pair of Red Sea islands from Egyptian to Saudi control in a deal that would give Riyadh a series of steps for the normalization of relations with Israel. , an Arab diplomat told The Times of Israel on Wednesday. The normalization measures will include opening Saudi airspace to Israeli flights to the Far East, as well as direct flights between Israel and Saudi Arabia for Muslim pilgrims, the Middle East diplomat said, confirming a report by the Axios news website. The US National Security Council’s Middle East director, Brett McGurk, flew to Saudi Arabia this week in a last-ditch effort to seal the deal in time, but it was unclear if he would succeed or if the announcement would have to wait until after his trip. Biden. said the Arab diplomat. Biden will also discuss broader regional cooperation efforts, maintaining a ceasefire between warring parties in Yemen and the global energy crisis. US President Joe Biden and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. (Collage/AP) The president sought to play down the fact that the GCC+3 meeting is being hosted in Saudi Arabia, after vowing during his election campaign to treat Riyadh as a “pariah” over its human rights record. However, global developments over the past year — specifically Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — have led Biden to shift his approach to the Gulf kingdom, given its centrality to the oil market and the potential for further Israeli integration into the region.
