The choice of Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid to visit the UAE reveals the keenness of Israel and America to strengthen relations with Arab countries instead of addressing the Palestinian issue at home.

This was stated

in an article

by Aaron David Miller,

a

senior researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and published by the American "Foreign Policy" website, saying that ignoring the Palestinian issue is not possible for both Israel and America.

Miller says that the administration of US President Joe Biden and the new Israeli government believe, wrongly, that abandoning the Palestinian cause is a viable option.

Trump's legacy

He pointed out that the advice given to the Biden administration is that it should do everything in its power to appreciate the legacy of former US President Donald Trump, and prevent another explosion between the Palestinians and Israel.

He drew attention to the fact that the Trump administration has always made clear that it was not interested in the two-state solution as much as its great interest in facilitating relations between Israel and the Arab countries.

On the Israeli side, Miller said that Lapid, as a supposed prime minister - in the event of continued rotation in the new Israeli government - does not realize the importance of the Palestinian issue, despite his declared support for the two-state solution, with the exception of the division of Jerusalem.

As for Biden, despite knowing that the Abraham Accords are not a substitute for solving the Palestinian issue, he does not pressure Israel on the Palestinian issue, but rather praises it without the Palestinians since he took office.

Indeed, the writer says, there are reports that the Biden team is even considering appointing a special envoy to manage the sponsorship of the Abraham Agreements.

You can't ignore the Palestinians

Miller went on to say that the new Israeli government, for its survival, will not be willing or able to engage in major provocative steps such as annexation of the West Bank or major settlement expansion there due to Lapid's veto and the presence of two from the left and Mansour Abbas's group from the Arab bloc in the Knesset.

This government may try to take small improvement steps to help the West Bank economy, or distribute Covid-19 vaccines to the Palestinian Authority, as it did last week.

But this, the writer explains, does not mean that the new Israeli government will be ready to deal in ways that benefit the Palestinians, noting that the new Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is to the right of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when it comes to the West Bank, and that he is not interested in confronting the settlers but in managing them.

Explosion prevention

As for preventing another explosion with the Palestinians, the writer explains that what will cause the Biden administration most problems is the possibility of such an explosion, because it completely disperses its efforts and corners it between a Republican party eager to portray Democrats as anti-Israel on the one hand, and progressive Democrats determined to push Biden to rein in Israel, on the other hand.

Miller says that the Biden administration cannot wash its hands of the Israeli-Palestinian issue, and it should have realized its mistake as soon as the first shots were fired in the recent war between Israel and the Islamic resistance movement "Hamas".