JERUSALEM — Pundits and politicians have taken recently to comparing PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to Israel’s founding father, David Ben-Gurion.

No less a figure than President Shimon Peres, one of Ben-Gurion’s foremost disciples, is the latest Israeli leader to offer the accolade.

The reason is simple: Like Ben-Gurion, Fayyad is building institutions of statehood.

In the 1920s, the Jews of Palestine under the single-minded Ben-Gurion established institutions for what they called the state-in-the-making: the Haganah with the idea of a single armed force; the Histadrut Trade Union, with a department for workers’ rights, a health fund, a bank and the Solel Boneh construction company; and the Jewish Agency dealing with immigration, schools and hospitals.

JERUSALEM — US Vice President Joe Biden expressed America’s “absolute, total, unvarnished commitment to Israel’s security” at a press conference in Jerusalem following a meeting with Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, March 8.

As such, Biden said, Washington was “determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, and we are working with many countries around the world to convince Iran to meet its international obligations to cease and desist.”

The cornerstone of the US-Israel relationship, Biden said, was America’s unwavering commitment to Israel’s security.

“Bibi you heard me say before, progress occurs in the Middle East when everyone knows there is simply no space between the US and Israel. There is no space between the US and Israel when it comes to Israel’s security.”