Joe Biden was scarcely back in the White House after Wednesday’s Middle East trip before Rishi Sunak became the next international leader to fly into Tel Aviv to express solidarity with Israel. Mr Sunak’s visit, which also came after one by the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, on Tuesday, followed an established pattern. He met the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to say he stood by Israel, paid a visit to President Isaac Herzog and held emotional meetings with families of some of the more than 1,400 Israelis who were murdered or kidnapped by Hamas on 7 October.
These visits all matter morally. More than anything else, they are public acts of solidarity and fellow feeling towards Israel and its people by their allies and their citizens. But these are also highly political trips, the public tip of an iceberg of diplomacy in which these allies are attempting, with nuances of difference and only mixed success, to influence its response to the Hamas attacks.
