The IDF postponed the demolition of the homes of terrorists who participated in recent attacks on Israelis until after President Joe Biden’s visit to Israel, which will take place on July 13, Srugim reported Wednesday.
Biden’s visit to Israel will take two days, after which he will take off for the Saudi city of Jeddah, to meet with Saudi heads of state and hold a summit with leaders from nine Arab countries. So––doing the math––the bulldozers should be on their way on July 16.
The White House’s official announcement regarding the president’s visit to the Middle East reads:
President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. will visit the Middle East region from July 13-16 to reinforce the United States’ iron-clad commitment to Israel’s security and prosperity and attend a Summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council plus Egypt, Iraq, and Jordan (known as the GCC+3). He will also meet with counterparts from across the region, to advance U.S. security, economic, and diplomatic interests.
The President will begin his travel in Israel, where he will meet with Israeli leaders to discuss Israel’s security, prosperity, and its increasing integration into the greater region. The President will also visit the West Bank to consult with the Palestinian Authority and to reiterate his strong support for a two-state solution, with equal measures of security, freedom, and opportunity for the Palestinian people.
[…]
This visit to the Middle East region culminates months of diplomacy and follows the President’s meeting with ASEAN leaders at the White House, his travel to the Republic of Korea and Japan, the Quad Summit, his hosting of the Summit of the Americas last week in Los Angeles, and his visit next week to Europe for the G7 and NATO Summits.
Biden’s last visit to Israel was in 2010 when he served as vice president under Barack Obama. Biden came to Israel several times in the 1970s and 1980s while serving as senator. The White House noted that his current visit will mark 50 years since Biden’s first visit to Israel.
Regarding that first visit, Biden has recalled on many occasions his 1973 meeting with then-Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, which in 2015 he said was “one of the most consequential meetings I’ve ever had in my life.” But in December of 2021, the president altered the story enough to suggest he may have lost count of the passage of time just a tad. He recounted: “And during the Six-Day War, I had an opportunity to — she invited me to come over because I was going to be the liaison between she and the Egyptians about the Suez, and so on and so forth.” Later, now-President Biden said Meir had referred to him during the meeting as “Mr. Ambassador.”
Here’s the thing: in our reality, the meeting took place about five weeks before the Yom Kippur War of 1973, not the Six-Day War of 1967. Also, no one on the Israeli side recalls Golda Meir having any intention of using him this junior senator as a “liaison” between Israel and Egypt.
Also, for the record, at the time of the Six-Day War in 1967, Biden was in law school and Meir was battling cancer, which is why in 1966 she had been replaced as foreign minister by Abba Eban.
