The White House has finally announced the revised dates for Joe Biden’s trip to the Middle East. From July 13-16 Biden will make a feckless journey to Israel, the West Bank and Saudi Arabia. Sandwiched in between a trip to Israel that will surely not include any tough questions about Shireen Abu Akleh, settlements, and human rights abuses; and a trip to Saudi Arabia that will feature the so-called “leader of the free world” literally abasing himself before a tyrant, dictator and murder, MBS, in the vain hope that the latter might consent to ease the pressure he is putting on the US public with the goal of removing both Congress and the White House from Democrats’ hands, Biden will stop in to visit Mahmoud Abbas and some other Palestinian leaders.
Any hopes that this might mean anything significant for the Palestinians are naïve. The tiny steps the Biden has taken to show some good faith to the Palestinians have been no more than a small fraction of what he has promised them, and that was a huge step down from US promises of the past. I look into all of this in my latest piece at Responsible Statecraft.