Thomas Friedman: America has begun to reassess its relationship with Israel

The New York Times published an analytical article by columnist Thomas Friedman on the tense relationship between the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the US administration.

Friedman highlighted the tension between Tel Aviv and Washington by answering three interrelated questions summarizing the causes of the crisis and its most prominent manifestations.

The three questions are: Why is the Israeli government trying to crush the country's Supreme Court? Why did US President Joe Biden say in an interview with CNN that Netanyahu's government is the most extreme Israeli government ever? Why did the US ambassador to Israel state that America is working to prevent Israel from "derailing"?

The short answer to the previous three questions, Friedman argues, is that the Biden administration sees the far-right Israeli government, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, engaged in unprecedented extremist behavior — under the cloak of judicial reform — that undermines the shared interests and values of the United States and Israel, and changes the parties' critical shared perception of the status of the West Bank that has been a factor in maintaining hopes for peace.

Why is Netanyahu seeking to reduce the role of the judiciary?

There are many positions that reflect the tension between the United States and the Israeli government led by Jewish extremists, such as the response of a member of Netanyahu's government to Biden's statement about the extremism of the Israeli government mentioned above, in which the Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, said that Biden should realize that "Israel is no longer another star in the American flag."

U.S. diplomats dealing with Netanyahu, Israel's longest-serving prime minister, who has political talent and great intelligence, are shocked and hard to believe that he is content to be led by people like Ben Gvir, to jeopardize Israel's relations with America and global investors, and to the prospect of civil war, just to stay in power with a host of nationalist extremists.

Friedman explains that the collapse of shared values between the United States and Israel began when Netanyahu's ruling coalition moved to change the long-established balance of power between the government and the Supreme Court, the sole independent watchdog of political power.

Jewish settlers want to neutralize the role of the Supreme Court so that they can establish settlements throughout the West Bank and easily confiscate Palestinian land. Jewish extremists want to neutralize the role of the Supreme Court so that no one forces their children to serve in the Israeli army and requires their schools to teach English, mathematics, science and democratic values. Netanyahu seeks to neutralize the role of the judiciary so that he can appoint whomever he wants to important positions, according to Friedman.

Netanyahu's government this week began introducing a bill in the Knesset that would prevent the Israeli judiciary from using the well-established principle of reasonableness in Israeli law, which gives the Supreme Court the right to review and reverse decisions deemed reckless or immoral by the cabinet, government ministers and some other elected officials.

Annexation of the West Bank and the threat to Jordan's security

Friedman believes that the shared perception that Israel's occupation of the West Bank is temporary and that a two-state solution will one day be achieved was one of the most important joint Israeli-American perceptions, saving Washington from worrying about the presence of more than 500,2 Israeli settlers in the West Bank, which has a Palestinian population of about 9.<> million. When the parties reach an agreement under which there are two states, some will leave and others will remain.

From this standpoint, the United States has always sided with Israel and defended it at the United Nations and the International Court of Justice in The Hague, and has opposed various resolutions and rulings based on the fact that its occupation of the West Bank is permanent and not temporary.

Now Friedman says the Israeli government is doing its best to destroy this perception that has enabled Israel to buy time. Since taking office in December 2022, Netanyahu has approved more than 7,<> new housing units, mostly deep in the West Bank.

His government also amended a law to enable brutal settlers to return to four settlements from which the Israeli army had expelled them, violating a pledge Israel had previously made to US President George W. Bush not to do so.

Netanyahu's continued undermining of this shared vision of the West Bank and the two-state solution now poses a real problem for other shared U.S. and Israeli interests, threatening Jordan's stability and pushing Arab states that signed agreements with Israel in the so-called Abraham Accords a step back.

Friedman said Israeli President Isaac Herzog would visit Washington next week and meet with the US president, a Biden way of signaling that his problem is not with the Israeli people but with Netanyahu's extremist government.

He concluded that he had no doubt that Biden would convey to the Israeli president the message that when the gap between the interests and values of a U.S. government and an Israeli government grows, a reassessment of the relationship between the two countries becomes inevitable.