Netanyahu back in Biden’s good graces, expected at White House ‘soon’

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to visit the White House “quite soon,” US Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides revealed on 28 March, mere hours after the premier yielded to popular pressure and postponed a controversial judicial overhaul plan.

“I assume after Passover, obviously no date has been set yet. There’s no question he will come and meet [US President Joe] Biden. They will see each other personally, I’m sure, quite soon. Without question, he’ll be coming to the White House as soon as their schedules can be coordinated,” Nides told Israel’s Army Radio.

Israel’s current crisis was put on hold on Monday night when Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners agreed to give the premier an extension on the judicial overhaul plan, effectively pausing the effort until the next Knesset session in May.

According to White House officials that spoke with the New York Times (NYT), Nides spent the weekend “passing along messages from Mr. Biden and his staff” to officials in Tel Aviv. These included “blunt” warnings that “Israel’s image as the sole democracy in [West Asia] was at stake.”

The White House reportedly reached “two conclusions by Sunday night,” with the first being that Netanyahu “miscalculated” when he booted defense minister Yoav Gallant, who publicly called for the judicial reforms to be halted and even threatened to resign.

Washington’s second conclusion was that Netanyahu “was looking for a way out of the crisis” and saw an opportunity to tell his far-right coalition partners that “he could not risk losing the support of Israel’s most important ally.”

But the White House reportedly had a more pressing concern for pressuring Netanyahu to freeze the reforms: the Israeli premier’s expected participation in Biden’s second Summit for Democracy this week. US officials were seemingly concerned about the optics of Biden virtually hosting the Israeli leader while hundreds of thousands protested outside his doors.

Hours after Tel Aviv announced it would temporarily pause the judicial reforms, US officials hailed the decision, with White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre saying that “a compromise is precisely what we have been calling for.”

Nonetheless, the NYT says that even after Netanyahu backed down, “the question turned to how long the Israeli leader could last,” with officials stressing that his reputation had been “tarnished” and that the issue had not been resolved “as much as kicked down the road.”