‘Israel Is a Sovereign Country’: Netanyahu Fires Back at Biden after Judicial Reform Setback

Tensions in the U.S.-Israel alliance are bubbling to the surface as Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government grapples with constant needling from the Biden administration. In a tweet firing back yesterday, Netanyahu took a swipe at President Biden over his criticism of the Israeli government’s stalled judicial reform plan.

Biden told reporters on Tuesday that he hopes that Netanyahu “walks away from” the judicial proposal, which was shelved this week amid internal opposition from figures in Netanyahu’s Likud party and mass protests in Tel Aviv. He added that he would not invite Netanyahu to the White House in the near term.

Netanyahu took to Twitter in response to the president’s comments, suggesting that he was not respecting Israel’s sovereignty.

“I have known President Biden for over 40 years, and I appreciate his longstanding commitment to Israel,” Netanyahu wrote. “The alliance between Israel and the United States is unbreakable and always overcomes the occasional disagreements between us.”

He defended the substance of the judicial plan, which he said would “strengthen democracy” by “restoring the proper balance” between Israel’s government institutions.

Then, Netanyahu said in a third and final tweet in the thread: “Israel is a sovereign country which makes its decisions by the will of its people and not based on pressures from abroad, including from the best of friends.”

The proximate reason for Netanyahu’s comment about sovereignty is the White House’s response to the judicial reform plan — a blatant intervention into Israeli politics as Netanyahu’s government faces a significant challenge to its stability.

However, since the new government came to power last year, the Biden administration has struggled behind the scenes to come up with an approach to dealing with Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, the ministers of national security and finance, respectively.

Among other things, the White House national security council has reportedly held meetings about the extent to which U.S. officials should engage with the two controversial Israeli ministers.

The administration has also publicly condemned comments made by the two ministers. After Smotrich made a speech earlier this month in which he said, “there is no such thing as Palestinians because there is no such thing as a Palestinian people,” the State Department blasted his remarks as “dangerous” on March 21.

At the same press briefing, the department’s spokesman said that the U.S. “is extremely troubled” by recent Israeli legislation on settlements, adding that “The action also represents a clear contradiction of undertakings the Israeli Government made to the United States.”

In the background, meanwhile, the erosion of Democratic support for Israel has continued over the past several months. A poll released by Gallup earlier this month found that Democrats sympathize more with Palestinians than Israelis, by 49 percent to 38 percent.

Earlier today, Haaretz reported that progressive Democratic lawmakers are circulating a letter that will ask President Biden to ensure that U.S. funding will not support Israeli settlements and to reevaluate security assistance to Israel.