The Libyan Backlash and Biden's Weird Fixation on Normalization Deals

The blowup in Libya is embarrassing for the Israeli government, but it also raises questions about the Biden administration’s judgment.

The Biden administration’s strange obsession with pursuing more Arab-Israeli normalization deals backfired last week when the Israeli foreign minister publicized a meeting with his Libyan counterpart:

One of Libya’s rival prime ministers rejected Thursday the prospect of normalizing relations with Israel days after news broke of a secret meeting between the countries’ two foreign ministers.

Last Sunday, the Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen publicly announced that he and Libya’s foreign minister had held a private meeting in Rome the previous week, the first ever between top diplomats from both countries.

The next day, Libya’s Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah suspended Foreign Minister Najla Mangoush and launched investigation into the meeting. It is illegal to normalize ties with Israel under a 1957 law in Libya, which has long been hostile toward Israel and supportive of the Palestinians.

The U.S. had been encouraging the recognized government based in Tripoli to pursue normalization with Israel, and that government has apparently been willing to play along as long as it wasn’t public knowledge. CIA Director Bill Burns visited Tripoli earlier this year, and pursuing normalization was reportedly one of the things that he proposed. The Libyan prime minister was receptive, and he seems to have thought that he could get more support from Washington if he cooperated.

Cohen’s revelation of the meeting caused a huge backlash in Libya. The episode prompted the prime minister to fire the foreign minister, and she felt compelled to flee the country for her own safety. The Libyan debacle underscores how unpopular normalization is across the region and how only authoritarian governments that can afford to ignore public opinion are willing to consider it openly. If the UAE or Morocco had to put normalization to a vote, it would never pass, but because their governments can get away with ignoring what their people want they are able to agree to it (as long as the U.S. provides them with sufficient incentives and favors).

The blowup in Libya is embarrassing for the Israeli government, but it also raises questions about the Biden administration’s judgment.