Dept. of Hmmmm….UPDATED

A couple of days ago, I expressed surprise at the Netanyahu camp’s pretext for the prime minister bailing at the last moment on this year’s nuclear summit.

The prime minister, they said, realized that some Muslim participants might make an issue of Israel’s nuclear weapons capability.

This should hardly have been a surprise — Arab and Muslim leaders never lose an opportunity to make an issue of Israel’s capabilities (Turkey’s Recip Tayyip Erdogan’s hasn’t kept his mouth shut about it for days).

My first reaction was "Boker Tov, Bibi," but the prime minister is by no means clueless — so I’ve been on the lookout for other possible explanations.

Here’s one:

a) When Netanyahu was coming, reporters (including me) were told that there was not going to be a summit meeting with Obama. Nobody said why, but the reason was clear: Netanyahu has yet, since meeting with Obama last month, to come up with an announcement on building in eastern Jerusalem that would satisfy the Obama administration. Notably, that March meeting did not even produce a photo-op.

b) My inbox is gasping from the virtual weight of announcements of Obama’s tete-a-tetes with leaders attending the conference. Jordan, Malaysia, Ukraine, China, Armenia — everyone. And photo-ops galore.

c) Now imagine the impact of Obama photo-op with leaders tall and leaders small, leaders Muslim and leaders Christian … but no Bibi.

UPDATE: Shai Franklin reminds me that Obama is meeting only with leaders with whom he has not had recent bilateral meetings;  for instance, he is not formally meeting with the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, with whome he met around the same time he had his Netanyahu meeting.

I stand corrected — but I think the optics would have been very hard on Netanyahu. Moreover, I wonder whether, before this thing ends, there won’t be a meeting with Sarkozy…