Before the date and details of the lightning visit to Israel by US President Donald Trump had been finalized, the office of President Isaac Herzog, late on Thursday afternoon, issued a press release stating that the open house Sukkot festivities that had been scheduled to take place at the President’s Residence today had been canceled.
The reason cited was anticipated street closures in Jerusalem for security reasons. In the end, Trump is now scheduled to arrive for a short visit tomorrow, and not today.
Whenever a US president visits Israel, there are certain closures in Jerusalem’s Rehavia-Talbiyeh neighborhoods, where the official residences of the president and the prime minister are located. Streets are also closed in the area around the hotel in which a visiting US president is staying.
Security is also upgraded for visiting presidents of other countries, but it is never as tight as for the US president.
The president’s open house reception on one of the intermediate days of Sukkot is a years-long tradition, and it is not the only tradition that Herzog has broken.
The open house is not the only tradition broken by Herzog
This year and last, there was no apples and honey reception for the diplomatic corps prior to Rosh Hashanah, and the annual Christmas-New Year reception for Christian clergy and lay leaders was closed to the media, whereas it had always been open before.
The streets at the rear of the President’s Residence are not closed because they are not on the route of the US president’s meetings and speaking engagements.
No personal invitations were required for the president’s open house on Sukkot, and it was an opportunity for Israelis both Jewish and non-Jewish, religious and secular, Sabras and immigrants, to mingle on an equal footing in a non-political environment.
Druze notables used to come from the North of the country, and Bedouin from the South. Evangelicals who had come to Israel for the Feast of Tabernacles were among the tourists and pilgrims who mingled with the locals.
The cancellation was a missed opportunity for harmonious people-to-people contacts.
This year’s open house would have differed considerably from its predecessors in that it was organized together with the Culture and Sport Ministry and not the Agriculture Ministry, which always played a significant role in the past by exhibiting a variety of strains of different Israeli fruits and vegetables, while individual farmers brought crates of their produce for the public to taste.
The boycott in some countries on products made in Israel has caused many Israeli farmers to dump fruit and vegetables that they were unable to export, so this year’s open sukkah should have been used to promote Israeli agricultural products.