Thomas Friedman: Netanyahu government making rethink of US-Israel ties ‘inevitable’

Friedman said US President Joe Biden believes the government is using its judicial overhaul push as a smokescreen to engage “in unprecedented radical behavior… that is undermining our shared interests with Israel, our shared values and the vitally important shared fiction about the status of the West Bank that has kept peace hopes there just barely alive.”

The op-ed, headlined “The US Reassessment of Netanyahu’s Government Has Begun,” is the latest of several he’s published since Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc’s victory in the November elections.

Stressing the administration’s dismay, Friedman noted a number of public comments against the Israeli government made recently by senior American officials, including Biden’s calling it “one of the most extreme” he’s ever seen and departing Ambassador Tom Nides’s remark that the US is seeking to prevent Israel from “going off the rails.”

“There is a sense of shock today among US diplomats who’ve been dealing with Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister and a man of considerable smarts and political talent,” Friedman continued, rejecting the premier’s argument that he’s in control of far-right allies like National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir.

“They just find it hard to believe that Bibi [Netanyahu] would allow himself to be led around by the nose by people like Ben Gvir, would be ready to risk Israel’s relations with America and with global investors and WOULD BE READY TO RISK A CIVIL WAR IN ISRAEL just to stay in power with a group of ciphers and ultranationalists.”

Friedman, whose columns are understood to be closely read by Biden, attributed the “breakdown in shared values” between the US and Israel to the government’s efforts to push through far-reaching changes to weaken the judiciary, “the only independent check on political power” in Israel’s constitution-less unicameral parliamentary system. The coalition is currently advancing a bill that would block courts from exercising judicial review over the “reasonableness” of elected officials’ decisions as part of the judicial shakeup.

“Such a huge change to Israel’s widely respected judicial system, which has guided the emergence of a remarkable start-up economy, is something that should be done only after study by nonpartisan experts and with a broad national consensus,” Friedman wrote. “That is how real democracies do these things, but there has been none of that in Netanyahu’s case. It underscores that this whole farce has nothing to do with judicial ‘reform’ and everything to do with a naked power grab by each segment of Netanyahu’s coalition.”

Friedman also cited a Monday op-ed by The Times of Israel’s editor David Horovitz, who wrote regarding the so-called reasonableness bill: “Only a government bent on doing the unreasonable would move to ensure that the justices — the only brake on majority power in a country with no constitution and no enshrined, unbreachable defense of freedom of religion, freedom of speech and other basic rights — cannot review the reasonableness of its policies.”

Beyond the domestic implications for Israel, Friedman warned that the overhaul was endangering “shared interests” between Israel and the US, citing as an example “the shared fiction that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank was only temporary and one day there could be a two-state solution.”

“This Israeli government is now doing its best to destroy that time-buying fiction,” he said, pointing to the rapid clip at which settlement construction is being approved and the passage of a law aimed at reestablishing several northern West Bank communities that had been evacuated alongside the 2005 Gaza withdrawal.

Friedman went on to charge that “Netanyahu’s steady destruction of this shared fiction is now posing a real problem for other US and Israeli shared interests,” such as the stability of neighboring Jordan and the effort to ink a normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

“If Netanyahu’s government is going to behave as if the West Bank is Israel, then the US will have to insist on two things,” Friedman said, calling for a potential visa waiver agreement to apply to West Bank Palestinians and questioning why the US should defend Israel in international forums like the United Nations and the International Criminal Court.

The NYT columnist concluded by saying that President Isaac Herzog’s trip to Washington next week is meant as a signal by Biden “that his problem is not with the Israeli people but with Bibi’s extremist cabinet.”

“I have no doubt that the US president will arm the Israeli president with the message — out of sorrow, not anger — that when the interests and values of a US government and an Israeli government diverge this much, a reassessment of the relationship is inevitable,” he said.

“I am not talking about a reassessment of our military and intelligence cooperation with Israel, which remains strong and vital. I am talking about our basic diplomatic approach to an Israel that is unabashedly locking in a one-state solution: a Jewish state only, with the fate and rights of the Palestinians [to be determined].”

“Such a reassessment based on US interests and values would be some tough love for Israel but a real necessity before it truly does go off the rails. That Biden is prepared to get in Netanyahu’s face before America’s 2024 election suggests that our president believes he has the support not only of most Americans for this but of most American Jews and even most Israeli Jews,” Friedman added.

The column appeared the same day the US administration urged Israeli authorities to “protect and respect the right of peaceful assembly” during mass demonstrations, with a statement issued by the White House National Security Council appearing similar to some of the responses the US has issued regarding crackdowns on protests by authoritarian regimes around the globe.

The judicial overhaul has inspired months of massive protests, with critics warning that it will effectively snuff out Israel’s democratic system of checks and balances by concentrating power in government hands.

Despite clashing with the Biden administration on several matters, Netanyahu has shown himself to be sensitive to US criticism, and his government’s decision to alter the proposed legislation and pass it piecemeal may have been aimed at swatting away potential White House brickbats.

Before Netanyahu agreed to pause the overhaul in late March in order to allow for talks with the opposition, the Biden administration had been gradually raising its voice against the plan, noting that the countries’ shared commitment to strong democratic institutions is what has helped bolster their bilateral relationship for so many decades.