Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced at the weekly cabinet meeting Sunday that U.S. Vice President Joe Biden may visit Israel in the coming days.
“You have certainly heard reports to the effect that U.S. Vice President Joe Biden is considering coming to Israel in the coming days,” Netanyahu told the cabinet in opening remarks. “His advance team will arrive today. A date for the visit has yet to be determined, but it is clear that Vice President Biden is a welcome guest in Israel anytime he decides to come here.”
Dates for a visit by Biden have not yet been set.
The two men spoke together last month on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
The meeting came just after sanctions were lifted from Iran as part of the July 2015 nuclear deal signed by the G5+1 with Tehran.
Biden last visited Israel in 2010. What should have been a cordial event was transformed into a disaster.
An Interior Ministry staffer inadvertently announced a step in long-approved routine construction plans for a Jerusalem housing project, creating a diplomatic issue for the U.S.
Biden immediately condemned the project, saying it “undermined the trust” needed for talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
During the same visit, Palestinian Authority “officially postponed” a planned ceremony to dedicated a square in Ramallah in memory of female mass-murder terrorist Dalal Mughrabi – and then held it anyway.
On the final day of Biden’s visit, top PA figures gathered at the public square with numerous others to “unofficially” mark the anniversary of the 1978 attack on Israel led by Mughrabi, known as the Coastal Road Massacre – and dedicate the square in Mughrabi’s memory.
At the time, Biden intended to convince both Israel and the PA to resume final status talks, albeit through intermediaries.
Both Netanyahu and Opposition leader Isaac Herzog, chairman of the Zionist Union party, agree that given the current conditions, there is no chance of reviving the so-called “two state solution” at the present time.