They have known each other for decades, but the rag is burning between US President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in the midst of a political crisis in Israel over a disputed judicial reform.
And for the Democratic president, a fervent supporter of Israel for half a century, the dilemma becomes very public in the face of the most right-wing government in the history of the Jewish state.
The balancing act: displaying “unwavering” support for the Israeli ally while keeping its distance from the Netanyahu government, the most “extremist” he has ever known according to him.
Joe Biden may lavish advice of caution with regard to this reform, even denouncing it, the Israeli Prime Minister is advancing as if nothing had happened, qualifying it in passing as a “minor correction” of Israeli justice, despite daily protests at home and criticism abroad.
Rarely has an American president interfered so much in Israel’s internal affairs, even if his power of influence remains limited.
The White House on Monday described as “regrettable” the approval by the Israeli Parliament of a key measure of this judicial reform project, supposed to challenge certain powers of the magistrates.
And in a very unusual way, the American president went so far as to bring a New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman, to the White House to send the message that he opposed this reform, “a source of division” according to him.
Beyond the reform itself, the Biden administration does not hide its frustration with the continuation of colonization in the occupied Palestinian territories, despite its repeated calls for de-escalation.
She tirelessly defends the solution of the two Israeli and Palestinian states, but seems to be preaching in a vacuum.
The current tensions are reminiscent of those between President Barack Obama and Mr. Netanyahu already, when Joe Biden was vice-president and the United States negotiated the Iranian nuclear agreement, concluded in 2015 to the chagrin of Israel.
This agreement has been moribund since former President Donald Trump, himself close to Benjamin Netanyahu, withdrew from it in 2018 and remains so to this day even though Mr. Biden did try to revive it at the start of his term. .
Testifying to these tensions, the bickering multiplies around a meeting or not at the White House in the fall between MM. Biden and Netanyahu, he who has not been invited since his return at the end of 2022 as head of the Israeli government.
Joe Biden, on the other hand, received President Isaac Herzog, a moderate, last week.
For Benjamin Netanyahu, who denied any notion of being snubbed in an interview with ABC, there is no doubt that President Biden did “invite him to the White House”, during their recent telephone conversation, a meeting which according to it will take place probably “in September”.
But the White House, visibly annoyed, cast doubt on the place of the meeting and is content to say that the two men “will meet in the United States later this year”.
Despite everything, experts agree that the support of the United States for the Israeli ally is not about to fade.
Voices here and there are calling, for example, for a reduction in American military aid, as demanded by the left wing of the Democratic Party.
But American diplomacy dismisses even the idea. “I can tell you that’s not going to happen,” State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said.
The United States annually provides some $3.3 billion in military aid to Israel.
Max Boot, of the Council on Foreign Relations think tank in Washington, said he expected “the strained relationship between Biden and Netanyahu to continue.”
He argues that Mr. Netanyahu “seems ready to face off with Biden (…) on the strength of the support of Republicans in Congress, who have generally adopted an approach: for or against Israel”.
This probably does not escape Joe Biden, who is campaigning for re-election in 2024.
But, adds Max Boot, this alignment with the Trumpist wing of the Republican Party risks “alienating other sectors of American public opinion” traditionally pro-Israel.
In the meantime, the United States and Israel need each other, in particular cherishing the hope of a normalization of relations between the Jewish state and Saudi Arabia, which Riyadh intends to monetize.
“We are working on it,” Benjamin Netanyahu told ABC on Thursday, just as National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan was in Saudi Arabia for his second visit in a few months, also after that of the head of the American diplomacy. Antony Blinken in June.
29/07/2023 04:54:53 – Washington (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
