As the violence continued to rage in Gaza and on the West Bank – and Israeli protesters made their anger at their government felt on the streets of Tel Aviv – Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in Washington for what was always going to be a fraught visit. “Netanyahu, at least do no harm in Washington,” ran the headline of an editorial in Haaretz newspaper as he flew out, noting that the “person who sabotaged – with his own hands, deliberately and directly – the longstanding, bipartisan American support is Netanyahu himself”.
No doubt the journalist who penned this editorial was thinking of the big news from the US election campaign that Joe Biden – a longstanding friend of Israel, with whom Netanyahu has mainly enjoyed cordial relations – had stepped down from the Democratic ticket and endorsed his vice-president, Kamala Harris, as his replacement. Harris’s views on Middle East politics are distinctly different to Biden’s – more of which later.
In the event, Harris was not in the chamber when Netanyahu addressed a joint sitting of Congress on July 24. Instead, she was at a campaign event in Indianapolis – something billed as a longstanding engagement, but which was nonetheless widely reported as a snub.
