Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was forced to refuse a major visit to the United Arab Emirates 10 days before the elections, reports The Times of Israel . The reason for this was the disagreement between Israel and Jordan over the visit by the prince of the Arab country to the Al-Aqsa mosque. And despite the fact that Netanyahu assures that the conflict has been settled and nothing serious has happened, this could seriously affect the upcoming elections.
There are regular elections. There are early elections. Israel, however, has proved: there are situations when even the phrase “next early elections” becomes a cliché. The Jewish state will host the fourth (!) Elections in the last two years on March 23. And on them the “wizard Bibi”, as Netanyahu is jokingly called for his unsinkability, will have to work miracles again to stay in power.
Netanyahu lost some of his trump cards, the most important of which lost the US elections on November 3, 2020. Many noted that the cynical position of Netanyahu, who was one of the first to congratulate Joe Biden and betray his main foreign policy ally Trump, would hardly save him from problems in this direction. And so it happened, Netanyahu will no longer be able to trade his “special” relationship with America as under Trump, who did a lot for Israel.
Nonetheless, Netanyahu still has some pretty powerful trump cards. Take Trump’s legacy, for example. In recent months as President of the United States, Trump has been actively campaigning for the reconciliation of Israel with the Arab states. What motives the American president had for this is not so important, the main thing is that he allowed the dreams of the right-wing Israelis to come true – peace with the Arabs without territorial concessions.
In fact, it was the conclusion of peace treaties with a number of rich Arab countries that became the main achievement of Benjamin Netanyahu during the period between the elections. The Israeli prime minister in every possible way wanted to consolidate this with a beautiful picture of his business visit to Abu Dhabi, where, according to rumors, the representatives of the UAE were to announce plans to invest 10 billion dollars in the Israeli economy.
Reconciliation between the Jewish state and a number of Arab countries is already a fait accompli. But the failure to visit, according to media reports, occurred out of the blue due to a small diplomatic scandal. Jordan’s Crown Prince Hussein bin Abdullah II planned to visit the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. But he was forced to turn back at the border due to disagreements with the Israeli authorities over the number of armed guards that could accompany him.
Of course, nothing serious happened, and the conflict was quickly resolved at a high level, but because of this incident, Netanyahu was unable to fly to a meeting with the UAE Crown Prince Muhammad bin Zayed al-Nahyan. The trip had to be postponed due to the fact that Jordan for too long did not coordinate the passage of the Israeli prime minister’s plane through its airspace. In the end, the Jordanians still gave the go-ahead, but it was too late, the trip was canceled.
