WASHINGTON (AP) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government is a little more than a week old, but it’s already giving the Biden administration headaches.
Just days into his term, a controversial member of Netanyahu’s right-wing cabinet riled US diplomats with a visit to a holy site in Jerusalem that some say could foreshadow other contentious moves, including vast expansions of Jewish settlement construction on land claimed by the Palestinians. .
And Netanyahu’s government adopted punitive measures against the Palestinians that stand in direct opposition to several recent Biden moves to strengthen U.S.-Palestinian relations, including restoring aid to the Palestinian Authority that had been cut under the Trump administration and that let Palestinian officials visit US states.
The new administration is an unwelcome complication for a Biden national security team seeking to shift attention away from the Middle East and toward rivals such as China and Russia. It also comes as Republicans take control of the House of Representatives and are eager to make Biden unfriendly to Israel ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
To prepare for more turmoil, Biden is sending his national security adviser to Israel in mid-January in an attempt to prevent potentially deeper rifts between his administration and its top Middle Eastern partner. That visit by Jake Sullivan may be followed by other high-level trips to Israel, including one by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, according to administration officials.
Their message goes beyond warnings about stoking tensions with Palestinians: It’s also about not cozying up to Russia, especially now that Moscow is dependent on Israel’s main enemy, Iran, in its war against Ukraine; and not upset the delicate Middle Eastern security balance.
Since Netanyahu won hotly contested elections last year with huge support from the Israeli right, US officials have sought to dampen predictions of a collision course, saying they will judge his government by actions rather than personalities. Biden himself spoke about his years-long relationship with Netanyahu.
“I look forward to working with Prime Minister Netanyahu, who has been my friend for decades, to jointly address the many challenges and opportunities facing Israel and the Middle East, including threats from Iran,” Biden said, when Netanyahu took office on December 29. .
Although Biden and Netanyahu have known each other for years, they are not close. Biden and former Obama administration officials who now work for Biden still harbor resentment toward the prime minister who, during his previous iteration as Israel’s leader, tried to derail their signature foreign policy achievement: the Iran nuclear deal.
Still, the administration is signaling it will engage with Netanyahu while avoiding more extreme members of his government. That approach would not be unprecedented in the region: The United States deals with Lebanon’s government while shielding members of the Hezbollah movement, a designated foreign terrorist organization that is nonetheless a domestic political power. But it would be remarkable for the US to take a similar approach with such a close ally.
“We will deal directly with Prime Minister Netanyahu,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said this week when asked about possible contacts with Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvirs, whose visits to the site known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims. when Noble Sanctuary sparked a huge outcry.
The involvement of Ben-Gvir, a West Bank settler leader, and other extreme right-wing figures in Netanyahu’s government, who are hostile to the Palestinians and opposed to a two-state resolution, have put Israel and the United States on opposite paths.
On Thursday, US Deputy Ambassador to the United Nations Robert Wood, at an emergency Security Council meeting called by Arab states to condemn Ben-Gvir’s holy site visit, emphasized Biden’s firm support for “the historical status quo,” particularly the “Haram Al-Sharif/ The Temple Mount.”
Wood noted that Netanyahu had pledged to maintain the status quo — “We expect the government of Israel to follow through on that commitment,” he said — and stressed that the administration prioritized preserving the possibility of a two-state solution.
But on Friday, Netanyahu’s security cabinet approved a series of criminal actions against the Palestinian leadership in retaliation for the Palestinians pressuring the UN’s highest judicial body to issue a statement on the Israeli occupation of the West Bank.
These moves underscored the tough approach to the Palestinians that Netanyahu’s government has promised at a time of rising violence in the occupied territories.
The Security Cabinet decided to withhold millions of dollars from the Palestinian Authority and transfer these funds to a compensation program for the families of Israeli victims of Palestinian militant attacks. And it will deny benefits, including travel permits, to Palestinian officials who are “leading the political and legal war against Israel.”
Meanwhile, Biden’s administration is moving in the diametrically opposite direction. Since taking office, the administration has reversed Trump’s aid ban and provided more than $800 million in economic, development, security and other assistance to the Palestinians and the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.
In the fall, the State Department obtained an opinion from the Justice Department that allows Palestinian officials to visit the United States and spend money in the United States, despite laws preventing such travel and transactions and a Supreme Court ruling that Congress has an enforcement role in the foreign policy process.
The administration “may reasonably believe that being prevented from hosting the PLO delegation in Washington would seriously impair the president’s diplomatic efforts,” the Justice Department said in a little-noticed Oct. 28 statement.
Then, exactly a week before Netanyahu took office in late December, the State Department imposed, but immediately dropped, terror sanctions against the Palestinian leadership, saying that engagement with the Palestinians is a critical US national security interest.
On December 22, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman announced to Congress that she had imposed travel bans on senior leaders of the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization because they are “not in compliance” with demands to combat and publicly condemn terrorist attacks against Israelis.
But in the same announcement, the State Department said Sherman had waived the travel bans “based on her determination that such a waiver is in the national security interests of the United States.”
“A lasting and comprehensive peace between Israel and the Palestinians remains a longstanding goal of American foreign policy,” the department said. “A blanket denial of visas to PLO members and PA officials, to include those who travel to the United States in furtherance of American goals and objectives, is inconsistent with the United States government’s expressed willingness to cooperate with the PLO and PA leadership .”
Despite an annual aid package of more than $3 billion to Israel and diplomatic support in international forums, US influence with Netanyahu appears limited.
The Biden administration has yet to follow through on its promise to reopen the US consulate in Jerusalem, which had historically served as the main point of contact with the Palestinians, and it has not taken steps to reopen the Palestinian embassy in Washington. Both facilities were shut down under the Trump administration.
Alon Liel, a former director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, said further US rapprochement with the Palestinians may be the only way to influence Netanyahu. “If they really want to put pressure (on Israel), Biden should say tomorrow in the coming months that we will consider reopening the Palestinian embassy in Washington. Then they will see the ground shaking here,” Liel said.
“But there is no sign of that,” he said. “As long as they say, ‘We are concerned about your democracy,’ these words are meaningless because there were so many words. There is nothing behind the words.”
Laurie Kellman contributed from Jerusalem.
