President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett will seek to reset the tone of US-Israeli relations in their first White House meeting and find common ground on Iran despite differences over handling its nuclear program.
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In talks overshadowed by the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the two leaders on Thursday will try to turn the page on years of tensions between Bennett's predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu, who was close to former President Donald Trump, and the last Democratic administration led by Barack Obama with Biden as his vice president.
In what's been planned as a low-key meeting, Bennett wants to move on from Netanyahu's combative public style and instead manage disagreements constructively behind closed doors between Washington and its closest Middle East ally.
The visit gives Biden an opportunity to demonstrate business as usual with a key partner while contending with the complex situation in Afghanistan.
Biden's biggest foreign policy crisis since taking office has not only hurt his approval ratings at home but raised questions about his credibility among both friends and foes.
Topping the agenda is Iran, one of the thorniest issues between the Biden administration and Israel.
Bennett, a far-right politician who ended Netanyahu's 12-year run as prime minister in June, is expected to press Biden to harden his approach to Iran and halt negotiations aimed at reviving the international nuclear deal that Trump abandoned.
Biden will tell Bennett that he shares Israel's concern that Iran has expanded its nuclear program but remains committed for now to diplomacy with Tehran, a senior administration official said.
US-Iran negotiations have stalled as Washington awaits the next move by Iran's new hardline president.
Bennett has been less openly combative but just as adamant as Netanyahu was in pledging to do whatever is necessary to prevent Iran, which Israel views as an existential threat, from building a nuclear weapon. Iran consistently denies it is seeking a bomb.
On the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Biden and Bennett are also divided. Biden has renewed backing for a two-state solution after Trump distanced himself from that long-standing tenet of US policy. Bennett opposes Palestinian statehood.
The consensus among Biden's aides is that now is not the time to push for a resumption of long-dormant peace talks or major Israeli concessions, which could destabilise Bennett's ideologically diverse coalition.
But Biden's aides have not ruled out asking Bennett for modest gestures to help avoid a recurrence of the fierce Israel-Hamas fighting in the Gaza Strip that caught the new US administration flat-footed earlier this year.
Among the issues that could be raised in Thursday's talks is the Biden administration's goal of re-establishing a consulate in Jerusalem that served the Palestinians and which Trump closed.
The administration has also emphasised that it opposes further expansion of Jewish settlements on occupied land.
Bennett, 49, the son of American immigrants to Israel, has been a vocal proponent of settlement building.
The senior US official said Biden intends to reassure Bennett that the end of the US military presence in Afghanistan does not reflect a "de-prioritising" of the US commitment to Israel and other Middle East allies.
Australian Associated Press
