Before moving to the White House, President Biden compared the relationship between the United States and Israel to that of close friends. “We love each other, and we drive each other crazy,” he said.
The United States and Israel are currently in one of the driving-each-other-crazy phases of their usually tight but often turbulent 75-year partnership.
The quest to rein in the judiciary is the latest point of contention as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed the first part of his package through the Israeli parliament on Monday.
What makes this moment different is that the rift has nothing to do with divisive foreign policy and national security issues such as arms sales, Iran’s nuclear program, territorial rights or the long-term push for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Rather, it concerns a strictly domestic issue within Israel, namely the balance of power and the future of freedom in a historic bastion of democracy in the Middle East.
The friction between the friends has complicated cooperation in other areas where the two allies have common interests. For months, Mr. Mr. Biden Netanyahu refused to invite him to Washington, which prevented at least some meetings between lower-level officials. The president relented last week and agreed to get together at an as-yet unspecified time and place in the United States this year. But he was later forced to make two public statements clarifying that he had not changed his mind about Mr. Netanyahu’s drive to limit the powers of the courts, even though he was on trial for corruption.
Debate over the prime minister’s plan, which has drawn hundreds of thousands of protesters to Israel’s streets over the weekend amid demonstrations in recent months, has spilled over into the United States’ Jewish community, with growing partisanship threatening to undermine American support for Israel.
“People left of center are generally more worried or upset about it than people right of center,” said Nathan J.
“There are many people in the American Orthodox community whose views are sympathetic or supportive of the reforms,” he said, adding that his community is more politically conservative, “but are concerned about the division this process has caused.”
Still, he and other longtime advocates and analysts said they were confident the relationship between the United States and Israel would endure. After a liberal Democratic congresswoman called Israel an “apartheid state,” the House overwhelmingly passed a resolution declaring the opposite to be true. Few Democrats boycotted President Isaac Herzog’s address to a joint session of Congress last week, and most of the rest gave him a standing ovation.
Robert B. Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said the fight over the judicial plan was the “conflict of the century” in Israel, but it did not really affect relations with the United States in a profound way. “It’s a little bit of a controversy,” he said. “In historical terms, this doesn’t even begin to rank as a US-Israel crisis.” Instead, “it’s really a family feud,” he said.
The United States and Israel have had one of the world’s closest partnerships since the founding of the Jewish state in 1948, and minutes later President Harry S. Recognized by Truman. But conflict has been in the DNA of the relationship since the beginning. Every president — even the most outspoken supporters of Israel — has clashed with Israeli prime ministers at one point or another.
Despite recognizing Israel, Mr. Truman, like his two successors, refused to sell new state offensive weapons. After the 1956 Suez Crisis, Dwight D. Eisenhower demanded the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Egypt. Ronald Reagan was angered by Israeli lobbying against his high-tech aircraft sales to Saudi Arabia. George HW Bush opposed Israeli settlement plans, he suspended a $10 billion housing loan guarantee.
Mr. Netanyahu has been at the center of many controversies over the past few decades. While he was deputy secretary of state, his public criticism of the United States in 1990 angered Secretary of State James A. Baker III was appointed by the State Department as Mr. prompted Netanyahu to ban them. Mr. After Netanyahu became prime minister, Bill Clinton was turned off by Bill Clinton after their first meeting in 1996, who later asked an aide, “Who is the superpower here?” Using an expletive for emphasis.
Barack Obama and Mr. Netanyahu, never one to warm to, was further alienated when the Israeli leader gave a speech to a joint session of Congress against American efforts to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran. Donald J. has bent over backwards to give Israel virtually everything on his geopolitical shopping list. Trump also eventually broke with Mr. Netanyahu, first over a disagreement over the annexation and then over Israeli congratulations to Mr. Biden for winning the 2020 election.
Mr. With Mr. Netanyahu. Biden’s relationship goes back years. Mr. Biden said he once presented a picture of Netanyahu using his nickname with an inscription: “Bibi, I don’t agree with a damn thing you say but I love you.” As vice president, Mr. Biden was briefed by the settlement announcement during his visit to Israel. But Mr Biden later insisted he and Mr Netanyahu were “still friends”.
In some ways, Mr. Biden’s approach differs from that of his modern predecessors. As he reaffirmed American support for a two-state solution to the Israeli conflict with the Palestinians, Mr. Biden became the first president in decades not to pursue peace talks, recognizing that there is little short-term prospect for success.
Mr., who has long resented American pressure to make concessions to the Palestinians. But Mr. Netanyahu has been outspoken in criticizing Mr. Biden’s efforts to negotiate a new nuclear deal with Iran, but Mr.
Judicial changes are a recent sore point. When Vice President Kamala Harris addressed Israel’s 75th anniversary celebration at the country’s embassy in Washington last month, just two words in her speech describing shared values — “independent judiciary” — prompted Secretary of State Eli Cohen to snap that he hadn’t read the plan. Opposition leader Yair Lapid recently lamented that “the United States is no longer our closest ally” because of Netanyahu.
For all that, Mr Satloff said he did not believe Mr Biden was “looking for a fight” with the Israeli leader – leading to last week’s invitation. “The administration has come to the conclusion that this strategy of stalling the presidential meeting has run its course,” he said.
Nevertheless, Mr. Biden doesn’t think much of a judicial restructuring package, New York Times columnist Thomas L. Mr. Friedman was summoned to the Oval Office last week. Netanyahu goes on to say that “the broadest possible consensus should be sought here.” He issued another statement to Axios on Sunday, saying, “The current judicial reform proposal is more divisive, not less.”
Aides insist that Biden is not trying to engineer a specific outcome in the internal politics of allies. Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, said the president was simply offering “fair but direct” advice.
In a brief interview after an appearance last week at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado, Mr. Sullivan was not about directing or lecturing. “We deeply believe that the foundation of our relationship is our common democratic values.”
Other Democrats also said it would be appropriate to weigh in with a friend. The massive street protests “should be a wake-up call to the elected leaders in Israel and I think they should give them pause,” said Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware and a close Biden ally.
But some Republicans faulted Mr. Biden for meddling in a domestic issue “maybe he knows more about the judicial system and is comfortable telling the Israeli people what to do,” said Senator James E. of Idaho, the senior Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee. “I don’t think it’s any more appropriate than them telling us how to vote here on the Supreme Court.”
In the American Jewish community, the issue did not generate the same fervor seen on the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
“People who are very involved in the Jewish institutional world are certainly activated by the proposed judicial reform, but I don’t think it will hold the American Jewish community at large,” said Diana Fursko, senior rabbi at Village Temple, a Reform synagogue in Manhattan.
Rabbi Fursko, author of a book on anti-Semitism to be released this summer, said the issue was complex and highlighted deep differences between Israeli and American societies. “I don’t think the Jewish American community needs to be overly involved in this,” he said. “But I think we have to have deep faith that the State of Israel will find a way forward.”
