Bennett in Egypt for first-ever trilateral summit with Sissi and UAE crown prince
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett was in Egypt on Monday for the first-ever trilateral summit of Israeli, Egyptian and Emirati leaders, an Egyptian official told The Times of Israel, confirming the premier’s unannounced visit to the Sinai resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh.
Bennett first met with Sissi shortly after arriving in the city, the official said. The Prime Minister’s Office has yet to comment on the trip, which comes days after Israel announced the inauguration of a new flight route between Ben Gurion Airport and Sharm el-Sheikh.
Flights are expected to start as early as next month, during the week of the Passover holiday. The news was widely covered by Israeli media, though it was barely mentioned in the Egyptian press.
Bennett last met with Sissi in September, in what was the first such summit between Israeli and Egyptian leaders in more than a decade. The premier met with UAE Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan in December, when he made the first-ever visit by an Israeli prime minister to the Gulf country.
Bin Zayed also landed in Sharm el-Sheikh Monday, days after hosting Syrian President Bashar Assad — a move harshly condemned by the Biden administration, which has thus far resisted joining efforts by a growing number of Mideast leaders to normalize the dictator.
The trilateral summit will mark the latest development in the Abraham Accords, which saw Israel normalize relations with the UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco in 2020 agreements brokered by the Trump administration. While the Biden administration so far has been unable to expand those accords, it has exerted effort in wrapping Egypt and Jordan — which already had ties with Israel — into them.
David Wurmser: The bride of the JCPOA and America’s regional collapse
So Israel is at a crossroads. It has three paths: It can accept its elimination; it can scramble like its Arab kin to grovel in front of Russia and China; or it can leverage its raw power to emerge as the region’s strongest tribe to become a strong horse itself. The second path will fail in violence—Israel’s fate is tied to the West inherently—leaving Israel only the choice of the first (accept death) or third (establish itself as a great regional power) paths.Iranian Drones Shot Down over Iraq in February Were Headed to Attack Israel
For the moment, Arab tribes have only the choice of the first or second paths, which means that they face death, since, as in the case of Israel, the second path will eventually fail and leave only the other path.
But if Israel chooses the third path and emerges as the strong horse, then it opens for the Arabs a new path for survival with Israel’s becoming their new protective strong horse—but only if Israel chooses the third path. It can only get close to its Arab neighbors if it is useful for their survival. This means that Israel must act to prove it is the strong horse.
It is tempting to compare the faltering of the United States’s regional stature to the collapse of the British and French positions in the late 1950s and 1960s. That collapse indeed was catastrophic. It exposed the region to Soviet penetration and triggered a new age of indigenously inspired radical challenges to traditional leaderships (the long-term effects of which we continue to suffer).
And yet, even that cataclysm will pale in comparison to the current collapse of the U.S.’s position, since the British and French retreat six decades ago seamlessly transitioned into the parallel rise of American power, which, to a large extent, compensated for its negative effects.
The American retreat has no global force to replace it, other than our adversaries, China or Russia. Regionally, perhaps Israel can fill the void left by the U.S. and buffer the impending collapse of American power. Hopefully, it can help our jilted allies survive, preserve some of our regional interests, check our regional adversaries and prevent our global opponents from seizing full control of the region.
But while Israel is powerful, it is not a global superpower. It cannot replace the regaining of our senses. But the damage now being done will be the work of generations to repair. Let’s hope that the enterprise soon begins.
Two Iranian drones shot down over Iraq last month by American fighter jets were set to explode in Israeli territory, the defense establishment has confirmed.The Caroline Glick show Ep43 – What does Biden’s new nuclear deal with Iran say?
The drones, which were downed by the international coalition close to Erbil in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, were said to be Shahed-136s.
Prior to the foiled attack, which occurred on February 14, Israeli security officials had been on high alert over fears of an Iranian response to a series of Israeli attacks on Iranian targets as part of the IDF’s war-between-wars campaign.
Last week, Hezbollah-affiliated al-Mayadeen reported that earlier in February Israel destroyed hundreds of Iranian drones in a strike that targeted the Kermanshah air base. In response to that attack, Iran fired 12 ballistic missiles toward Erbil targeting what they claimed to be an Israeli military base.
The confirmation of the reports comes a month after the Israel Air Force announced that two Iranian Shahed 197 drones heading toward Israel were downed by IAF F-35i fighter jets last year.
One drone, flying toward Israel from the south, was identified at around 1:44 a.m. and was shot down at 2:19 a.m. The second one, which was flying towards Israel from the east, was identified at 1:46 a.m. and downed at 2:16 a.m.
Biden and his team still say they are against Iran getting nuclear weapons, but their actions tell a different story. In this week’s Mideast News Hour, Caroline spoke with Gabriel Noronha, the former State Department Iran specialist who disclosed the scope of Biden’s concessions to Ayatollah Khamenei earlier this month. The two discussed the details of the concessions and what it means. They then considered what Trump’s Maximum Pressure strategy achieved and whether and how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine impacts Biden’s actions going forward.