Long before moving into the White House, President Biden compared the relationship between the United States and Israel to that of close friends. “We love one another,” he said, “and we drive one another crazy.”
The United States and Israel are currently in one of those driving-each-other-crazy phases of their usually tight but often turbulent 75-year partnership.
The forthcoming vote on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to rein in the judiciary has become the latest point of contention, as Mr. Biden cautions against pursuing a plan that has deeply divided Israeli society while the prime minister essentially tells him to butt out.
What makes this moment different is that the rift has nothing to do with the foreign policy and national security matters that typically provoke disagreement, like arms sales, Iran’s nuclear program, territorial claims or the long-running push to forge peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Instead, it concerns a strictly domestic issue inside Israel, namely the balance of power and future of freedom in the one historical bastion of democracy in the Middle East.
The friction among friends has complicated cooperation in other areas where the two allies have common interests. For months, Mr. Biden refused to invite Mr. Netanyahu to Washington, which prevented at least some meetings between lower-level officials. The president relented last week and agreed to get together at some as-yet-unspecified time and place in the United States later this year, but then felt compelled to issue a public statement making clear that he had not changed his mind about Mr. Netanyahu’s drive to curb judicial independence.
The debate about the prime minister’s plan, which drew hundreds of thousands of protesters into the streets of Israel over the weekend in the latest of months of demonstrations, has spread to the Jewish community in the United States as well, at a time when rising partisanship has threatened to undermine American support for Israel.
“People who are left of center are worried or more upset about it overall than people who are right of center,” said Nathan J. Diament, executive director for public policy for the Orthodox Union, one of the largest Orthodox Jewish organizations in the country.
“There are many people in the American Orthodox community whose view on the substance is sympathetic or supportive to the reforms,” he added, noting that his community leans more politically conservative, “but nonetheless are worried about the divisiveness that the process has caused.”
Still, he and other longtime advocates and analysts said they remained confident that the relationship between the United States and Israel would endure. After a liberal Democratic congresswoman called Israel a “racist state,” the House overwhelmingly passed a resolution declaring the opposite was true. Only a handful of Democrats boycotted last week’s address to a joint meeting of Congress by President Isaac Herzog, 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 clash of the century” within Israel, but it did not really affect relations with the United States in a profound way. “It’s a bit of a controversy lite,” he said. “In historical terms, this doesn’t begin to rank as a U.S.-Israel crisis.” Instead, he said, “this really is a fight within the family.”
The United States and Israel have had one of the world’s most intimate partnerships since the Jewish state was founded in 1948 and recognized minutes later by President Harry S. Truman. But conflict has been in the DNA of the relationship from the start. Every president — even the most outspoken supporters of Israel — has quarreled with Israeli prime ministers at one point or another.
Despite recognizing Israel, Mr. Truman refused to sell the new state offensive arms, as did his two successors. Dwight D. Eisenhower forced Israeli forces to withdraw from Egypt after the Suez crisis of 1956. Ronald Reagan was incensed by Israeli lobbying against his high-tech aircraft sale to Saudi Arabia. George H.W. Bush was so opposed to Israeli settlement plans that he suspended $10 billion in housing loan guarantees.
Mr. Netanyahu has been at the heart of many disputes in the last few decades. When he was deputy foreign minister, his public criticism of the United States in 1990 prompted an angry Secretary of State James A. Baker III to bar Mr. Netanyahu from the State Department. Once Mr. Netanyahu became prime minister, Bill Clinton was so turned off after their first meeting in 1996 that he asked aides afterward, “Who’s the superpower here?” using an expletive for emphasis.
Opposition Threatens to Shut Israel Down Ahead of Judicial Overhaul Vote: Live
