“Israeli” FM: “Mistakes” Were Made in Relations with US during Bibi Era, “We’ll Fix Them”

By Staff, Agencies

The bipartisan stance on relations with the “Israeli” entity has been damaged in the United States, new “Israeli” foreign minister Yair Lapid told his American counterpart Anthony Blinken during the meeting in Rome Sunday.

“In the past few years, mistakes were made,” Lapid said, adding, “We will fix those mistakes together”.

Also during the meeting, Blinken reiterated the US’ “commitment to ‘Israel’s’ security” and its support for the normalization efforts in the region, as several Arab states — the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan —  recently chose to restore diplomatic ties with the “Israeli” entity.

Lapid also said that he’d spoken with US lawmakers from both political parties and "reminded them all that ‘Israel’ shares America’s most basic values — freedom, democracy, free markets, the constant search for peace."

The two sides could not avoid the "hot topic" – the ongoing talks on reviving the 2015 Iran deal that the previous administration ditched in 2018, slapping Tehran with harsh economic sanctions. For years, the “Israeli” entity has been sounding the alarm about its neighbor's nuclear program, accusing Tehran of secretly developing nuclear weapons [which Iran has denied].

The “Israeli” top diplomat told Blinken that the “Israeli” entity has "some serious reservations" regarding the Vienna talks on the revival of the JCPOA, but fell short of elaborating on them in public.

"We believe the way to discuss those disagreements is through direct and professional conversations, not in press conferences," Lapid said.

While Lapid spoke about the mistakes of the past, the “Israeli” entity under Benjamin Netanyahu enjoyed a particularly warm relationship with the administration of former US president Donald Trump. The latter made a number of diplomatic gestures to the entity, including the recognition of al-Quds [Jerusalem] as the "undivided capital of ‘Israel’" and the Golan Heights as under “Israeli” sovereignty. The cherry on top was Trump's ambitious Middle East “peace plan” that envisioned the entity annexing settlements in the occupied West Bank and the Jordan Valley.

Trump's cozying up to the entity was met with harsh criticism by Palestinians, as well as other Arab nations, though it did not stop them from normalizing relations with Tel-Aviv.

Russia has never believed that the deal in its current form would contribute to a lasting Middle East settlement and expected the Biden administration to potentially reject it.

UAE-based The National outlet reported in March, citing an official document of the US State Department, that Washington planned to reset relations with the Palestinian Authority government, reversing Trump's policies that ignored the “two-state” solution principle as a basis for settling the longstanding conflict. However, no exact steps have been made so far.

Earlier this month, Trump lashed out at the Biden administration over the "great injustice" to the “Israeli” entity, criticizing the lack of protection it is now getting from the US Congress and touting how US lawmakers "loved" the entity when he was in the White House.