Advancing the visit by a full week testified to the urgency of the trip

PHOTO: NOAMGALAI / SHUTTERSTOCK.COM

Israel’s answer to Air Force One, the “Wing of Zion,” is effectively registered in Binyamin Netanyahu’s name, much like the Israeli premiership itself. But the aircraft was intended to serve both the prime minister and Israel’s president.

That’s why President Isaac Herzog was planning to fly on the Wing of Zion to Australia, as a guest of the local Jewish community following the Chanukah terror attack in Sydney. But Herzog’s plans hit a snag.

Too many countries along the route refused to allow the aircraft flown by Israel’s prime minister — over whose head hangs an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court in The Hague — to enter their airspace, making the planned flight impossible. Herzog was forced to take a circuitous itinerary that mostly served public-relations purposes.

Netanyahu, who urgently sought to fly to Washington, saw a sudden window of opportunity. He effectively commandeered the Wing of Zion, at Herzog’s expense.

In truth, all Netanyahu did was move up his schedule a bit. He had originally been expected in Washington on February 18, together with opposition leader Yair Lapid, at the annual AIPAC conference. Lapid’s old taunt to Netanyahu — “You lost America” — still haunts him. But over the last year, Netanyahu has spent much more quality time with Donald Trump than he has with Israel’s opposition leader.

Advancing the visit by a full week testified to the urgency of the trip, and to its objective. The Israeli media analysis of the move — that Netanyahu wanted to skip Trump’s “peace council” meeting next week with Qatar and Turkey — does an injustice both to the situation and to the event’s host.

“If there hadn’t been real urgency in moving the trip forward, Netanyahu would have avoided such a transparent maneuver — if only because Trump would immediately recognize it as a dodge,” a cabinet minister told me, urging observers to ignore background noise and hostile local commentary and to focus on what Netanyahu once called “life itself.”

“If there is anyone who can smell such evasions from a mile away, it’s Donald Trump. The very fact that Netanyahu asked to advance the meeting, and the president immediately agreed, tells me that both sides clearly understand the meeting’s importance.”

“I don’t know whether Trump has decided to strike, because even Trump himself hasn’t yet decided.” That remark was made last week by Netanyahu at Israel’s two most senior security forums: the security cabinet meeting and the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.

As someone who has become adept at stating his case, Netanyahu has concluded that — as in his court trial, so too in the diplomatic arena — his position must be presented directly, not via intermediaries, to the leader of the free world.

Rounds of meetings with Witkoff and Kushner, followed by the signals emerging from Muscat in Oman, where direct US–Iran talks opened last Friday, led Netanyahu to the realization that at this decisive moment, he must appear personally, boots on the ground, in Washington, whispering directly into the president’s ear.

This is the “revealed doctrine,” based on the four principles the Americans established at the start of the negotiations with Iran, three of which Israel regards as deal-breakers. First, complete dismantlement of nuclear capabilities — a threshold demand shared by both Israelis and Americans. Some in Israel say this has already been achieved, and the shrewd Trump would not pay for merchandise he holds in his hands.

Two other conditions — dismantling ballistic missile capabilities and ending support for proxy forces — are viewed by Israel as removing the current existential threat. The fourth condition, ending the regime’s slaughter of the Iranian population in the streets, was raised by Trump himself. The promise of public support for protesters in Iran, more than any geopolitical development, helped trigger the present diplomatic round.

These lines are being written amid the fog of confrontation, and experience teaches that with both Trump and Netanyahu, there is always also a “hidden doctrine.” The campaign against Iran last June began on the very day Trump declared that negotiations were progressing. This time too, aboard Air Force One — which Trump doesn’t have to share with any other official — he voiced optimism about progress.

No one would be surprised — not even the Iranians — if we discover afterward that Trump and Netanyahu had once again led a campaign of strategic deception. Time will tell.

Preparing the Political Ground

September 2026 — shortly before the month of memorial observances for the October 7 massacre — remains Netanyahu’s preferred election target, as predicted here previously. But for that to happen, the stars must align: an agreed-upon election date during the Yom Tov season, and a state budget passed in three readings.

Netanyahu effectively launched his election campaign last weekend. Using his exclusive authority as prime minister to approve the release of classified materials and protocols, he presented a lengthy document to the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and later released it publicly, setting out his version of the events of October 7.

Disavowing responsibility is nothing new. Already in the weeks after the devastating attack, Netanyahu posted — then deleted — a social media message assigning responsibility for the failure to the head of the Shin Bet. Since then, this has remained his recurring message, repeated like Cato the Elder’s refrain, emphasizing the claim of “zero intelligence warnings” in the lead-up to the attack.

In the document submitted to the state comptroller and published this week, Netanyahu upgrades the “J’accuse.” Other figures, such as former IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot —now a political challenger — are portrayed as supporting the flawed “conceptzia” and dismissing warnings over the possibility of Hamas breaching the Gaza security barrier.

If Netanyahu returns from Washington with understandings on dismantling of the “axis of evil,” culminating in the crushing of the Iranian “head of the octopus,” his campaign narrative for a sixth term will be clear. The security officials and former leaders who, he argues, were blinded by faulty assumptions will be pilloried as solely responsible for the disaster.

Netanyahu — “Mr. Security,” a league apart, all the familiar superlatives we mistakenly thought had vanished in the smoke of October 7 — will be presented as the ultimate comeback figure: the man who shook Israel from dust and ashes and led the country from the devastation of the Gaza envelope communities to a grand revival.

With Netanyahu, as is well known, responsibility is a supreme value — with the appropriate shifts of address: When it comes to failure, the responsibility of those subordinate to him is clear; they alone are to blame. When it comes to achievements, responsibility belongs solely to the prime minister — he and no other.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1099)