Biden Visit to Israel: A Year too Late

Haaretz columnist Aluf Benn writes that U.S. Vice President Joe Biden's visit to Israel this week would have made a greater impact had he come a year earlier.

... a year which his boss, President Barack Obama, wasted on fruitless diplomatic moves that only further compromised the shaky stature of the United States in the Middle East. Obama and his advisers expected the hand that he extended to the Arab world and Iran, the president's reference in his Cairo speech to passages from the Koran, and the public and demonstrable distance that he created from Israel would soften the Muslims' and Arabs' residual hostility for America. It didn't work.

Biden's visit -- from Monday to Thursday -- now serves only to improve Jewish relations before the November congressional elections, Benn writes, and to give Prime Minister Netanyahu a hat tip for agreeing to a 10-month settlement freeze.

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