Israel reported significant progress last month on an underground fence around the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. Officials say Israel is close to completing the underground component and can see the finish line with the above-ground elements (roughly 80% complete). Once fully assembled, the three-layered barrier may be the most sophisticated barrier in the world.

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Palestinian legislative elections are scheduled for May 22. Whether or not the vote takes place, finally scheduling elections was nothing short of remarkable. Palestinian politics has been in gridlock, with elections suspended since the terrorist group Hamas won a parliamentary majority in 2006. The stalemate gave way to civil war in 2007, during which Hamas conquered the Gaza Strip and the Palestine Liberation Organization clung to power in the West Bank. Since then, a bitter division between the two Palestinian territories has ensued.

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The State Department is developing a policy of engagement toward the Palestinian Authority (PA). The shift comes as the Palestinians plan for legislative elections on May 22 — their first since 2006 — in which the terrorist group Hamas appears likely to participate. While the Biden administration has not acknowledged it yet, congressionally imposed restrictions that President Biden himself helped author as a senator may complicate his administration's efforts to restore diplomatic contacts. The provision of financial aid may be even more complicated.

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Countless news outlets have portrayed the nascent Biden administration's foreign policy as rapidly pivoting away from President Donald Trump's much-maligned "America First" approach toward "Americans together" or "America is back," to name just a few. The implication is that the United States will no longer prioritize its narrowly defined self-interest or pursue merely transactional deals at the expense of the greater good.

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Rip off the Band-Aid, Mr. President.

We're one month into the Biden administration and the president still has not called the prime minister of Israel, America's most valuable ally in the Middle East. Admittedly, the sky is not falling. There is still plenty of time for the two leaders to speak. And there are plenty of senior officials downstream in the U.S. bureaucracy who are engaging with their Israeli counterparts. Secretary of State Blinken spoke with Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan spoke with Meir Ben Shabbat, Netanyahu's NSA. Innumerable other American bureaucrats are working with their counterparts in Jerusalem, too. The U.S.-Israel relationship is both wide and deep.

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