The Lapid-Bennett government’s foreign policy “doctrine”
Caroline Glick
From Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s stunning assault against his predecessor Benjamin Netanyahu at the Knesset, through Foreign Minister Yair Lapid’s trip to Brussels and his speech before the Global Forum on Anti-Semitism, this week the Lapid-Bennett government’s foreign policy doctrine was fully exposed.
One of the novel aspects of Bennett and Lapid’s governming arrangements is that there doesn’t appear to be any tension between them on foreign policy. In all previous unity governments there were great tensions as the prime minister, who hailed from one side of the ideological spectrum and his foreign minister, who hailed from the other. Each pulled Israel’s foreign policy in opposite directions, with the prime minister ultimately gaining the upper hand.
There is none of that in the Lapid-Bennett government and this week we discovered why that is the case. There is no tension because there is no competition. Lapid controls everything. Bennett is an afterthought, at best.
Consider Bennett’s behavior on Iran.
Wednesday, Iran’s outgoing president Hassan Rouhani announced that Iran has the capacity to enrich uranium to 90 percent purity – the level of purity required to develop nuclear weapons. The day before Rouhani’s announcement, the Biden administration made clear that it will do nothing to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear armed state...
In his speech Monday at the Knesset, Bennett didn’t lay out a policy for preventing Iran from developing a nuclear arsenal in the face of U.S. support for the regime and its military nuclear program. Instead, he threw an adolescent fit against Netanyahu replete with weird mimicry and obvious slanders. Bennett alleged ridiculously that Netanyahu did nothing to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons during his long tenure in office.
In other words, by the time Bennett is scheduled to shake Biden’s hand, it will likely be too late to change the course of events on Iran.
It was Lapid, not Bennett who rushed to meet with his U.S. counterpart Secretary of State Anthony Blinken almost immediately after taking office. In their meeting in Rome in late June, Lapid set out the government’s policy on Iran. He gave Blinken his pledge of “zero surprises.” That is, Lapid promised that Israel would not take action against Iran that wasn’t first coordinated with – or approved by – the pro-Iran Biden administration.
Having divested Israel from its power to independently act against Iran, this week, Lapid turned his attention to Europe. Tuesday, he participated in the monthly meeting of EU foreign ministers. In his address to his European counterparts, Lapid laid out his credo for strengthening EU-Israel ties.
Every year, the EU spends millions of dollars financing the operations of non-governmental organizations that wage political warfare against Israel, often in cooperation with terrorist organizations. These EU-financed and directed NGOs wage boycott campaigns targeting Israeli companies, nationals, Jewish supporters abroad and companies that do business with Israel. They demonize the IDF and its soldiers. They sabotage government and military operations through lawfare in Israeli courts and international bodies. They seek to undermine Israel’s social cohesion by radicalizing Israeli Arabs and other minority groups. Some of the EU-financed groups are controlled by the PFLP terror group.
In his remarks, Lapid ignored all of this and tried to reduce this open hostility and aggression to a difference of opinion based on ignorance.
Lapid arrived in Brussels as Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is preparing to wage another round of political war against Israel. This time, with the support not only of the EU, but of the Biden administration. As part of his preparations, Abbas submitted a list of 14 preconditions for the reinstatement of peace talks with Israel to Hady Amr, U.S. Assistant Deputy Secretary of State for Israel and the Palestinians and Biden’s candidate to serve as U.S. consul general in Jerusalem.
Since taking over Israel’s foreign policy, Lapid has abrogated Israel’s independence of action against Iran. He has embraced appeasement of the Palestinians, truckling to the EU, and kowtowing to the Biden administration as national policies. To “strengthen” Israel’s ties to Jordan, as King Abdullah cozies up to Tehran, he has capitulated to all of Jordan’s demands. On the other hand, he has treated Israel’s allies in the EU’s Visegrad bloc with hostility and Israel’s Abraham Accords partners with indifference.
All of this makes clear that under Lapid’s stewardship, Israel’s foreign policy isn’t based on a strategy for advancing Israel’s national interests. It is based on sucking up to the cool guys – the progressives in America, the jetsetters in Brussels and the Palestinians whom both the progressives and the Europeans view as their cause celebre. And it is based on joining them in bullying the unpopular guys – the Central Europeans, the anti-jihadists Arabs, and the Israelis, (or in Lapid’s case, the right-religious bloc).
This is where Bennett’s temper tantrum against Netanyahu at the Knesset meets Lapid’s upholding of “optimism,” as the key to world peace. Both men see the world through the eyes of children – Bennett stars in the role of the rebellious teenager who despises his dad. Lapid is the social climber who builds his position by brownnosing the football team.
Unfortunately, as they play out their teenage fantasies together, neither Bennett nor Lapid is noticing that their interlocutors are not children. They are paying no attention to the interests and goals that motivate foreign powers. And they are unprepared to deal with the actual dangers rising against Israel from all quarters.
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