Long before he entered the White House, President Biden compared US-Israel relations to those of close friends. “We love each other,” he said, “and we drive each other crazy.”
The United States and Israel are currently in one of those phases of their mostly close but often turbulent 75-year partnership, during which they drive each other insane.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bid to contain the judiciary has become the latest bone of contention as he pushed the first part of his package through Israel’s parliament on Monday, defying widespread protests and repeated cautionary tales from Mr Biden.
What is special about this moment is that the rift has nothing to do with foreign policy and national security issues that usually cause disagreements, such as arms sales, Iran’s nuclear program, territorial claims, or the long-running effort to forge peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Instead, it is a purely domestic issue within Israel, namely the balance of power and the future of freedom in the Middle East’s only historic bastion of democracy.
Tensions among friends have complicated cooperation in other areas where the two allies share common interests. For months, Mr Biden refused to invite Mr Netanyahu to Washington, preventing at least some meetings between lower-level officials. The President relented last week and agreed to meet later this year at an as yet unspecified time and place in the United States. But then he was forced to issue two public statements, in which he made it clear that he had not changed his mind about Netanyahu’s efforts to limit the powers of the courts, even though the prime minister is on trial for corruption.
The debate over the prime minister’s plan, which drew hundreds of thousands of protesters to the streets of Israel over the weekend in the final months of demonstrations, has also spread to the Jewish community in the United States, at a time when growing partisanship threatens to erode American support for Israel.
“People who are left of center are generally more concerned or upset about it than people who are right of center,” said Nathan J. Diament, executive director of public policy at the Orthodox Union, one of the largest Orthodox Jewish organizations in the country.
“There are many people in the American Orthodox community whose substantive perspective agrees with or supports the reforms,” he added, noting that his community tends to be more conservative politically, “but are still concerned about the division the process has created.”
Still, he and other longtime advocates and analysts said they remain confident that the relationship between the United States and Israel will endure. After a Liberal Democrat congresswoman called Israel a “racist state,” the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a resolution declaring the opposite. Just a handful of Democrats boycotted President Isaac Herzog’s speech before a joint session of Congress last week, and most others gave him a standing ovation.
Robert B. Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said the dispute over the justice plan is “the conflict of the century” within Israel, but it hasn’t really impacted relations with the United States in any profound way. “It’s a bit controversial,” he said. “Historically, this is nowhere near a US-Israel crisis.” Instead, he said, “It’s really a family dispute.”
The United States and Israel have enjoyed one of the closest partnerships in the world since the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948 and recognition by President Harry S. Truman. But the conflict was in the DNA of the relationship from the start. Every president – even the most staunch supporter of Israel – has at one time or another fallen out with Israeli prime ministers.
Although he recognized Israel, Mr. Truman refused to sell the state’s new offensive weapons, as did his two successors. Dwight D. Eisenhower forced Israeli forces to withdraw from Egypt after the 1956 Suez Crisis. Ronald Reagan was outraged by Israeli lobbying against his sale of high-tech aircraft to Saudi Arabia. George HW Bush was so opposed to Israeli settlement plans that he suspended guarantees on $10 billion in home loans.
Mr. Netanyahu has been at the center of many disputes over the past few decades. In 1990, when he was Deputy Secretary of State, his public criticism of the United States prompted disgruntled Secretary of State James A. Baker III to expel Mr. Netanyahu from the State Department. When Mr. Netanyahu became prime minister, Bill Clinton was so put off after their first meeting in 1996 that he asked his advisers afterwards, “Who is the superpower here?” Using an expletive for emphasis.
Barack Obama and Mr. Netanyahu, who have never been warm, became even more estranged when the Israeli leader delivered a speech to a joint session of Congress in which he heavily criticized American efforts to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran. Even Donald J. Trump, who went out of his way to give Israel virtually everything on his geopolitical shopping list, eventually broke with Mr Netanyahu, first over a disagreement over the annexation and later over the Israeli’s congratulations to Mr Biden on his 2020 election victory.
Mr Biden’s relationship with Mr Netanyahu has been difficult for years. Mr. Biden once said he gave Mr. Netanyahu a picture with his nickname inscribed: “Bibi, I don’t agree with anything you say, but I love you.” As vice president, Mr. Biden was undermined by a settlement announcement during a visit to Israel. But Mr Biden later insisted that he and Mr Netanyahu were “still friends”.
In some ways, Mr. Biden’s approach to Israel differed from that of his modern predecessors. While reaffirming American support for a two-state solution to Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians, Mr. Biden is the first president in decades not to hold peace talks, a realization that there is no prospect of success in the short term.
That alone should have been a relief to Mr. Netanyahu, who has long resented American pressure to make concessions to the Palestinians. But Mr Netanyahu was outspoken in his criticism of Mr Biden’s efforts to negotiate a new nuclear deal with Iran, while Mr Biden called Mr Netanyahu’s cabinet “one of the most extreme” he had ever seen.
The most recent sore point has been the legislative changes. When Vice President Kamala Harris delivered a speech at the country’s embassy in Washington last month to mark Israel’s 75th anniversary, just two words in her speech that described shared values - “independent judiciary” – made Secretary Eli Cohen remark that she hadn’t even read the plan. Yair Lapid, the leader of the opposition, recently lamented that “because of Mr. Netanyahu, the United States is no longer our closest ally.”
Still, Mr Satloff said he doesn’t think Mr Biden is “up for a fight” with the Israeli leader – leading to last week’s invite. “In my opinion, the government has concluded that this tactic of denying a presidential meeting is obsolete,” he said.
Still, Mr. Biden does not think highly of the judicial restructuring package, going so far as to call Thomas L. Friedman, the New York Times columnist, to the Oval Office last week to say that Mr. Netanyahu should “seek the widest possible consensus here.” On Sunday, he issued another statement to Axios, saying: “It looks like the current proposal for judicial reform will lead to more disunity, not less.”
Advisors insist Mr. Biden is not trying to effect a specific outcome in an ally’s domestic politics. Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, said the president gave only “reasonable but straightforward” advice.
“It’s not about us dictating or lecturing,” Mr. Sullivan said in a brief interview after appearing at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado last week. “It’s about us believing strongly that the foundation of our relationship is our shared democratic values.”
Other Democrats also said it would be appropriate to weigh with a friend. The massive street protests “should serve as a warning to elected leaders in Israel, and I hope they will give them food for thought,” said Sen. Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat and a close Biden ally.
But some Republicans accused Mr. Biden of meddling in a domestic political matter. “Maybe he knows more about the justice system and feels comfortable telling the Israeli people what to do,” said Senator James E. Risch of Idaho, senior Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee. “I don’t think that’s any more appropriate than that they should tell us how we’re going to vote on the Supreme Court here.”
In the American Jewish community, the issue has not evoked the same fervor as it did on the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
“Those who were very involved in the Jewish organizational world were certainly activated by the proposed judicial reform, but I don’t think this has gripped the American Jewish community at large,” said Diana Fersko, chief rabbi at the Village Temple, a reform synagogue in Manhattan.
Rabbi Fersko, author of a book on anti-Semitism due out this summer, said the issue is complicated and notes deep differences between Israeli and American societies. “I don’t think the Jewish American community needs to be overly involved,” she said. “But I think we must firmly believe that the State of Israel will find a way forward.”