JERUSALEM — The greatest leaders of their respective nations never met in person, but the streets named after them will intersect for as long as Jerusalem stands. George Washington Street and King David Street meet right in front of the King David Hotel, where President Biden, the man who holds the same office as the Father of His Country, will lay his gray head to rest on Wednesday and Thursday nights.

Strolling past the hotel, this correspondent saw Israeli and American flags fluttering in the wind, as well as barriers stacked on the sidewalk, ready to be erected to halt traffic come Wednesday. A sign in Hebrew informed that residents should find other routes while POTUS is in town. Toddlers careered around the YMCA across the street, oblivious to a man hosing stone, expectantly.

Mr. Biden, who will arrive in Israel before heading off to Saudi Arabia, will find a Jewish state embroiled in political turmoil. Its so-called unity government fell last month, necessitating another election, the fifth in the last three years. 

The man who will greet Mr. Biden at Ben-Gurion Airport, Prime Minister Lapid, acceded to that role, which he will exercise in a caretaker capacity, on the ruins of a coalition spanning the right, the left, and even the Islamists — one that he was crucial in constructing. 

That government found its raison d’etre in the removal from office of Prime Minister Netanyahu, whose 12-year reign was ended by this previously unimaginable, and ultimately unsustainable, alliance. Over the past year, Mr. Netanyahu has sniped from the sidelines, working to bring down Prime Minister Bennett, a one-time protege turned foe.

Even as the final details of the Biden visit are hammered out, electoral jockeying has begun. Defense Minister Benny Gantz merged his moderate Blue and White party with Justice Minister Gideon Sa’ar’s New Hope. They hope to gather support from the center and from what Mr. Gantz called “the statesmanlike right,” the sliver of that spectrum not affiliated with Mr. Netanyahu.   

It was widely understood in both Washington and Jerusalem that the Biden administration preferred the government that was to the Netanyahu restoration that might yet be. Nevertheless, hedging American bets, a meeting with Mr. Netanyahu is on Mr. Biden’s agenda. He will also make appearances at Yad Vashem and deliver remarks at the Maccabiah Games, known as “the Jewish Olympics.”   

Operation “Blue Shield 3,” the code name for Mr. Biden’s visit, will run from Wednesday afternoon to Friday, when Air Force Once leaves for Saudi Arabia. The Times of Israel reports that it will involve 16,000 law enforcement persons. The president will view the new Iron Beam defense system, visit Yad Vashem, and participate in a virtual confab with the leaders of India and the United Arab Emirates. 

While much of this itinerary is standard diplomatic fare, certain elements of the trip are best understood as pointed rebukes to the policy of Mr. Biden’s predecessor. Mr. Biden will meet in Bethlehem with the aging Palestinian Arab strongman, Mahmoud Abbas, who was left out in the diplomatic cold during much of the Trump administration. 

The president will also open up the purse strings for Palestinian hospitals, with Axios reporting that $100 million will be diverted to those institutions, a sharp reversal of President Trump’s $25 million cut to the health system in 2018. This tracks a broader trend of opening the American cash spigot, which had been closed during the last administration, to the Palestinian Authority.

In what one foreigh policy hand, Aaron David Miller, calls the “much too promised land,” geography can signify just as much as lucre. The president will visit East Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives, the first time a sitting commander in chief will visit a Palestinian neighberhood in Jerusalem that is not in the Old City.

That appearance, at the Augusta Victoria Hospital, has provoked among Israelis some unease. Barak Ravid of Axios reports that the White House rejected an Israeli request to allow government officials to join Mr. Biden for the East Jerusalem leg of the journey. In 2017, following a decision by Mr. Trump, America recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. 

This parceling of the president’s presence comes on the heels of controversy regarding the opening of the American consulate in Jerusalem, traditionally a point of contact with the Palestinian Arabs. Mr. Trump folded it into the embassy, and while there have been rumblings that this administration desires its reopening, that move was forestalled to avoid destabilizing Mr. Bennett’s government.  

Two meetings that are not set to occur speak to the president’s desire to minimize diplomatic risk. The parents of an Israeli-American, Malki Roth, killed by a Palestinian terrorist in  2001 have demanded a presidential meeting and are asking for America to pressure Jordan to extradite the woman who planned the attack, Ahlam Tamimi.

Also desiring the spotlight that comes with a presidential audience is the Christian family of an Al Jazeera journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed in the midst of a firefight between Israeli forces and Palestinians near Jenin, at the West Bank. The American state department has suggested that she was “likely” killed by gunfire that was from Israeli positions but that was probably unintentional.

Mr. Biden will collect an award in Jerusalem. He will receive the Israeli Presidential Medal of Honor at the home of Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog. The laurel has previously been awarded to, among others, President Obama and Secretary of State Kissinger. 

The president’s award notes that Mr. Biden is “a true friend of the State of Israel and the Jewish People,” but that does not mean that his relationship with the Jewish state has always been smooth. While the president calls himself “a Zionist” and enjoys recollecting about time spent with Prime Minister Meir, there have been rocky moments as well. 

When he served as vice president, Mr. Biden on a visit in 2010 reacted with reported fury to the announcement of the construction of 1,600 homes for Jews in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo. Time magazine wrote that “having been publicly humiliated by the Israeli announcement,” the vice president “made no secret of his pique.”

The matter of pique recalls a famed confrontation between Mr.  Biden, then a senator, and Prime Minister Begin during a closed-door meeting at the Senate in 1982. The two men, who both waited decades to occupy the highest office in their respective lands, went at it over settlements. Absorbing Mr. Biden’s opprobrium, Begin is supposed to have said, “I’m not a Jew with trembling knees.” 

As Tevi Troy records in the Wall Street Journal, Begin, who confirmed that the meeting was “lively,” went on to declaim, “I am a proud Jew with 3,700 years of civilized history. Nobody came to our aid when we were dying in the gas chambers and ovens. Nobody came to our aid when we were striving to create our country.”

That country that Begin did so much to create now will welcome the man who drove the Israeli premier to righteous indignation. There are rumors of a Middle Eastern earthquake on the horizon: normalization of relations between the House of Saud and the Jewish state. If he can pull that off, Mr. Biden could soon be accepting awards not only at Jerusalem, but at Oslo.