WASHINGTON – As Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett work to form a national-unity government, one question that remains open is what would be their foreign policy.
Under the discussed power-sharing agreement, Bennett will serve as prime minister until the fall of 2023, while Lapid will serve as foreign minister. In the second half of the term, the two would switch positions.
Lapid, leader of the centrist Yesh Atid Party, and Bennett, leader of the right-wing Yamina Party, are in disagreement on many foreign-policy issues, first and foremost regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
They addressed the differences in their world views, promising that the new government would focus mostly on domestic issues and avoid taking any major steps on the foreign-relations front.
“It won’t be a government that would make another disengagement or hand over territories,” Bennett said in the Knesset on Sunday.
They reportedly discussed a mutual veto mechanism, all but promising that controversial issues could not be promoted.
Another question that remains open is what would be the relationship between Bennett and Lapid and the Biden administration. In other words, how would the Biden administration deal with the new government?
“If Bennett and Lapid manage to form a government before the deadline, the Biden administration will, of course, engage with Bennett as prime minister,” Michael Koplow, policy director at the Israel Policy Forum, told The Jerusalem Post. “Irrespective of where they are on the political spectrum, US presidents and Israeli prime ministers are always going to establish relationships with each other.”
“But the fact that [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu will be out of the picture is not going to eliminate differences of opinion on policy,” he said. “Bennett is well to Biden’s right when it comes to Palestinian issues. But even if his position on annexation and settlements presents a far-right pole, the Israeli political spectrum, in general, is to the right of the Biden administration on Palestinian issues.”
“Due to the fact that this will be a unity government that includes right, center and left parties, and the fact that Bennett and Lapid will each have an effective veto on policy, I don’t expect that a new Israeli government – whether under Bennett or Lapid – will undertake drastic moves with regard to the Palestinians or West Bank policy, and I also do not expect Biden administration policy of not pushing the two sides into a peace process to change,” Koplow said.
“That means that there will continue to be some friction on smaller issues, such as evictions of Palestinians in east Jerusalem and settlement expansion, and that itself may cause problems in the coalition, as Lapid wants to be more sensitive to Democratic concerns, whereas Bennett will see it as inappropriate American involvement in internal Israeli affairs,” he said. “But I don’t expect to see a major falling out between [US President Joe] Biden and Bennett over Israeli-Palestinian issues, since the types of moves that would cause such a clash – annexation or legalization of illegal outposts – won’t happen under this type of broad unity government.”
Natan Sachs, director of the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institute in Washington, told the Post the Biden administration will “work with whatever government is democratically elected in Israel. But there will likely be a stark difference in their affinities toward Bennett and Lapid.”
“The latter, as foreign minister, may take the lead on some aspects of the US relationship, with Defense Minister [Benny] Gantz continuing to lead on others,” he said. “Still, the Bennett-Biden connection will matter, and it’ll be politically awkward for Biden.”
“On the Palestinian issue, there is actually a commonality of interests,” Sachs said. “The Biden administration and a new unity government would both prefer the issue lay low for four years. As we just saw, they won’t have that luxury. But both sides may try to manage the issue, avoiding any major moves.
“This could be successful for a while, but it depends on other things too – changes to the PA or to [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud] Abbas’s tenure, events on the ground. This is not a conflict you can always manage; it often manages you.”
According to former ambassador Dennis Ross, a distinguished fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former special assistant to president Barack Obama and an adviser to secretary of state Hillary Clinton, “If there is a new government, I would expect that the administration would reach out to it.”
“There would only be one prime minister at a time, so I would expect President Biden to have an early call with Bennett to signal Israelis and the world that our bilateral relationship is deeply rooted and not driven by personalities,” he told the Post. “I would also expect that Lapid would get an early invite to Washington where he would also see President Biden.”
One major issue on the agenda is Iran, Ross said.
“It will remain important to both the US and Israel, and that will not change with a new Israeli government,” he said. “While Gantz would remain as the defense minister, the reality of Netanyahu no longer being the PM would surely make President Biden and Secretary [of State Antony] Blinken want to gain a sense of any changes in priorities or expectations coming from the new government.”
“For sure, there will be a US commitment to deep and ongoing consultations with Israel on Iran and, I would guess, continuing support for the steps Israel feels it must take to deal with the Iranian threat in Syria,” Ross said.
“No doubt, Biden and Blinken will also want to discuss other issues: in the region, the Palestinians and the normalization process and the options on both; and outside the region, China and Russia,” he said, adding that the politics in Washington of a new Israeli government, “one not seemingly tied to the Republicans and [former president Donald] Trump the way Netanyahu was, creates an opportunity both for the new Israeli government and Biden.”
“For Bennett, Lapid, et al., there is a moment to be seized to reach out and to restore the image and reality of Israel’s commitment to strong ties to both Democrats and Republicans,” Ross said. “That will be helpful to Biden and the mainstream of the Democratic Party that remains close to Israel and must deal with a progressive wing that seeks to challenge America’s traditional embrace of Israel.”