Austria’s Chancellor Sebastian Kurz arrived in Israel on Sunday in the hope of gaining a stamp of legitimacy for the far-right ministers in his government.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s objective, meanwhile, was to convince a first European Union member state to move its embassy from Jerusalem.
But when the two leaders emerged for a press conference on Monday, all smiles, neither issue was mentioned once.
Both Israeli and Austrian diplomats said later that the chances of either leader getting what they wanted are slim.
The Israeli government announced in December that it would not engage with the ministers of the far-right Freedom Party, who are partners in Mr Kurz’s government, and that is not about to change.
There were rumours that Mr Netanyahu may have been willing to shift if the Austrians were prepared to move their embassy, but senior officials in Vienna made clear there is little prospect of that happening.
Austria assumes the rotating presidency of the European Union Council next month and is therefore unlikely to diverge from European policy on Jerusalem for at least remainder of this year.
It leaves Mr Netanyahu no closer to his goal of breaking the common European policy on not recognising Jerusalem’s status as Israel’s capital city.
But there have been a series of other Austrian gestures towards Israel.
A commitment to Israel’s security was added to the Austrian coalition’s formal guidelines by Mr Kurz, and he has promised to highlight Israel’s concerns during the forthcoming EU presidency.
He had also solved “data-protection” issues that hindered the access of researchers from Israel’s Holocaust authority, Yad Vashem, to Austrian archives.
The Austrian ambassador was one of only four EU envoys to attend the opening of the US Embassy in Jerusalem last month and Mr Kurz took the rare step – for a European leader – of visiting the Western Wall, albeit in a “private capacity”.
It was still significant enough for Mr Netanyahu to single it out in his remarks as proof of the Chancellor being a “true friend” of Israel.
