Much has been said and written about the absence of “the bride” (why not "the groom"?) from the Jan. 28 White House launch ceremony of the “deal of the century” for Israeli-Palestinian peace. However, in addition to the absence of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, all the sponsors of the peace process in the past decades — the states that gave the Israeli-Palestinian agreements international validation and funding — also stayed away from the “historic” event. The absence of Russian President Vladimir Putin — the most important foreign player in the Middle East arena — was particularly glaring. Russia’s UN Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya told reporters several hours prior to the event that the United States had not consulted with Russia on the plan and had not even briefed it on its content.

Accused No. 1, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, against whom an indictment on three charges of corruption was filed with the Jerusalem District Court just hours before the East Room ceremony, prolonged his trip abroad by flying from Washington to Moscow, before returning to Israel. He did not fly to Moscow to seek President Vladimir Putin’s blessing for the US plan. He took the trouble to head there in order to offer a ride at the taxpayer’s expense to a young Israeli woman, Naama Issachar, convicted in Russia of drug smuggling. Putin had pardoned her just hours before Netanyahu’s arrival.

Russia’s negative attitude toward US President Donald Trump’s deal of the century has long been known (more to come on this). Netanyahu is dancing attendance on Putin in the hopes of picking up a few more votes of immigrants from the former Soviet Union in the March 2 elections, at the expense of his Russian-speaking nemesis Yisrael Beitenu leader Avigdor Liberman. At the same time, the head of Israel’s interim government (Netanyahu) is lending a helping hand to Trump’s arrogant policy while pushing Putin aside.

Moscow was a partner in the Israeli-Arab diplomatic process back in the days of the Soviet Empire. Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev signed the invitation to the 1991 Madrid Conference on the Middle East along with President George H.W. Bush. At the 1993 Oslo Accord signing ceremony, Deputy Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev stood alongside Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Russian President Boris Yeltsin was invited to attend the 1994 signing of the Israel-Jordan peace agreement, along with US President Bill Clinton. US President George W. Bush invited Russia to join the international Quartet that signed the 2003 Road Map for Peace and the 2007 launch of the Annapolis peace process. Russia was among the 40 senior representatives from around the world, among them Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, that accepted the invitation to attend, while only three Arab ambassadors — from Oman, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates — attended this week’s bride-less (or groom-less) wedding.