The US government’s long-held position of unconditional support for Israel is seemingly being placed under duress, due in large part to the current push from the regime in Tel Aviv towards a legal system overhaul. As Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, bars his ministers from traveling to Washington, speculation has arisen of a breakdown in US-Israel ties, however, as much as the Biden administration may be in dismay, the special relationship is going nowhere.
Reports are continuing to surface, of an apparent dip in Israeli-US relations, due in large part to the actions of current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In a piece, written by the infamous Zionist journalist, Ben Caspit, for al-Monitor, it is speculated that Netanyahu’s decision to bar his government’s ministers from traveling to Washington will pose severe restraints on the functionality of the American-Israeli security systems.
Israeli Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, had travelled to New York last week, where he was to remain for the duration of his US visit, and was allegedly under strict orders to stay away from the Pentagon and from meeting his counterparts in Washington. This, coupled with calls from former Israeli officials to refrain from meeting the Israeli PM during his US visit, in the coming month, are acting to suggest that an imminent breakdown in relations between Tel Aviv and Washington is in the works.
On Tuesday, the Biden administration announced that it had nominated Jack Lew to become its new ambassador to Israel, succeeding Tom Nides. The move was met with protest from a number of Republican Party lawmakers who accuse Jack Lew of being too adversarial towards Benjamin Netanyahu. Lew’s affiliation to the Obama administration, under which he became one of the chief architects of the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal, seems to be the cause of the distress over his nomination. He also worked under the former Clinton administration.
Jack Lew, being put in such a position, could certainly mean that the US Biden administration is seeking to apply more pressure to the government of Benjamin Netanyahu. Lew has been critical of Netanyahu, is an observant Jew and a Zionist, also managing to aid in the short-term success of the Iran Nuclear Deal. Although this could be interpreted as Washington adopting a more hostile position than usual, what it more likely indicates is that they are positioning themselves for a serious battle towards securing what appears to be their top Middle East policy objective; Saudi-Israeli normalization.
Will Biden Punish Israel?
For those speculating that the current Democratic Party administration is seeking to pushback against the far-right government of Benjamin Netanyahu, first they should take a step back and look at the full context at play.
The first point that has to be touched on here is the issue of the Israeli PM’s planned legal system overhaul. It is clear, from all authoritative Israeli media polling data, that just over half of the Israeli population opposes the initiative set forth to curtail the powers of the Israeli judiciary. This policy, which Israeli PM Netanyahu is advancing, is being pushed through at the expense of Israeli domestic stability, but it is a price that the Israeli Premier is willing to pay in order to keep his extremist coalition alive.
Benjamin Netanyahu is a career politician, he knows that he will not be in power without the continuous backing of the ‘Religious Zionism’ alliance and that these far-right fanatics will not tolerate him backing down on this issue. Therefore, Netanyahu is staying the course, even if this means agitating a large portion of the Israeli citizenry and Zionists around the world.
The US government operates a relationship with Israel, which it proclaims to be mutually beneficial and based upon shared values. In reality, the relationship is one of a shared desire to dominate the Middle East; this goal is severely undermined when Israel is weakened and when Tel Aviv no longer operates under the Western-style liberal democracy model. Again, promoting the idea of Israel being a democracy is somewhat disingenuous, as roughly half of the people living under the Israeli government’s direct control have little to no human rights afforded to them. Despite this, for Israeli Jews, the system does aspire to operate in order to serve the Jewish population in a similar way to Western-style democracies.
Because Zionists — both in the United States and in occupied Palestine — are in large numbers protesting against Netanyahu’s judicial reform push, this places pressure on the US government to serve the interests of these Zionists. It also wants to see a stable and strong Israeli regime, one which sits in a dominant position regionally. In addition to this, there is a problem in the optics of Israel openly heading towards a theocratic model of governance; something that many Israelis currently worry is going on. Therefore, Netanyahu is most certainly being put under pressure by the Biden administration.
There is also the issue of how much the Israeli regime is currently working to antagonize the Palestinian people, specifically surrounding the issue of al-Aqsa mosque — the third holiest site to Muslims. Instability and the escalation of violence towards the Palestinian people is a bad look for the Israelis regionally, it works to drive outrage throughout the Arab World and when Israeli forces assault worshippers at al-Aqsa, this embarrasses Arab regimes that have already normalized ties with Tel Aviv.
Why does this matter? Because, at this time, tension between the Israeli regime and Palestinians provides yet another obstacle to the US push to achieve a normalization deal between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and Israel. The Saudi leadership are already on bad footing with the US Biden administration, so convincing them to normalize ties with Israel — the Arab World’s top enemy — is a difficult ask, one that they could not go through with during the Saudi-friendly Trump administration. In order to bring the KSA on board, the US will have to make major concessions and provide a large incentive to make it work.
Saudi Arabia also needs to have something to point to in order to claim that it achieved something for the Palestinians too. Even in the case of the UAE’s normalization deal with Israel, which was something that they had planned to do and were already on board with, they still needed for Netanyahu to claim that he had dropped the idea of annexing the West Bank because of their deal. During the times of Netanyahu’s former government, he was able to make this pledge with no significant pushback. This is no longer the case with his current coalition, who have made it a goal to annex the West Bank and are staunchly opposed to any deal with the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA).
If the Israeli government is at odds with its own people, it faces domestic instability and its economy is taking hits, while it also pushes for a takeover of Islam’s third holiest site and seeks to escalate its openly racist persecution of Palestinian Arabs, all of this works as a deterrent to Saudi normalization. The US understands all of this well and will need to make a difference if it is going to achieve a normalization deal. On the other side is Israeli PM Netanyahu, who is looking out for his own political interests and does not want to see his own ministers act out of lockstep with his own agenda.
It is in this context that we see what appears to be a breakdown in diplomatic ties between the US and Israel. Yet, this does not mean that the relationship is going anywhere soon, nor does it mean that we will see any dramatic shifts. Rather, there is a conflict of interests at this current time.
The US government will provide cover-ups when Israel murders US citizens, like we saw in the prominent case of the Israeli assassination of veteran al-Jazeera journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, last year. Despite the American government having some of the world’s toughest property protection laws, when US citizens have their property stolen or destroyed by Israeli settlers, no action is taken. Without having to go through the plethora of examples which could be pulled up here, it is clear to see that the US-Israeli relationship matters more than the lives of Americans to Washington, this is how unshakeable the relationship is. Never has a sitting American President dared threaten to withdraw its billions in completely unneeded aid money to Israel, because the relationship has been so incredibly tight since 1967, to the point where Israel has been largely treated as if it had been absorbed into the US as an additional State.
The bottom line is this, the Biden administration wants to see a strong and dominant Israel. They also want to achieve Saudi-Israeli normalization, so that they can have a special photo op and walk away from this term in office with the claim of a major diplomatic victory, especially in the face of China’s recently brokered Iranian-Saudi rapprochement. In order for this to become a reality, it is just a fact that Washington has to apply pressure in the right places. If this means covertly aiding the Israeli opposition, which it would clearly favor to be in power right now, or if it means playing hardball sometimes and using stronger politicians to pull the Israelis into line, this is what they are going to have to do.
The current approach of the US Biden administration, towards the completely chaotic Israeli coalition, is not working to forward the goals of Washington’s Middle East agenda, nor is it congruent with the aspirations of the majority of Zionists. It appears that the Democratic Party government is finally attempting to rectify its completely failed approach. However, placing so much emphasis on Saudi-Israeli normalization, which reportedly took precedence over various other issues during Tuesday’s call between the Israeli PM and US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, is short-sited and could do more harm than good. Unfortunately for Washington, their policy of unconditional support for the Israeli regime has severely backfired, allowing the birth of a dominant settler political insurgency that now rules Tel Aviv. By allowing Israel to get away with anything it wants, they have created the beast that they now must contain in order to achieve a short-term policy goal, one that could come at the expense of real power in West Asia.
