Israel’s democracy fight: Why Biden is getting off the sidelines

For weeks at the outset of the year, White House officials hinted that President Joe Biden would soon welcome Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – newly returned to power – to the Oval Office for the traditional reaffirmation of “unbreakable” U.S.-Israel ties.

Then … nothing.

As recently as Monday, following Mr. Biden’s Sunday phone call with Mr. Netanyahu, the White House spokesperson for strategic communications, John Kirby, told Israeli TV Channel 13 there was no invitation and no “timetable” for the Israeli leader’s visit.

What shifted the White House from “invite” to “no invite” was an unprecedented and unflagging explosion of public opposition in Israel to the Netanyahu government’s proposed judicial reforms – an overhaul critics say would gut any semblance of separation of powers, place Israel on a slippery path to authoritarian rule, and ultimately threaten its cohesion and national security.

Moreover, the protests in Israel sparked an evolution in thinking inside the White House, from leaving Israel’s domestic issues untouched to considering the reforms a threat to the “shared values” that for more than seven decades have formed the foundation of trust underpinning the two democracies’ bonds.

The shift in thinking underscores rising alarm in the White House and among a growing number of Democratic congressional leaders and American Jews that Israel, long touted as a rock of solid democratic rule in the authoritarian sands of the Middle East, is at risk of mirroring a decade of global democratic backsliding.

“The Biden administration has come to understand that for the unprecedented numbers of Israelis who are protesting, this is about more than a judicial reform. It’s about whether or not their country will remain a pro-Western democracy governing a pluralistic, humanistic society,” says Aaron David Miller, a Middle East expert who served in six administrations of both major political parties.

“For them,” he adds, “this has become a battle for what they believe is the soul of Israel.”

And although Mr. Biden is philosophically inclined toward Israel’s protesters – he came into office declaring the confrontation between democracy and autocracy the defining battle of this century – the White House is also mindful that experience shows that blatant threats and diktats from Washington have never worked to alter Israeli government behavior.

Thus, the subtle gesture of the White House invitation that now isn’t.

Urgent realization

“The Biden administration is being careful not to give the guys on the far right in Israel any reason to scream that America is interfering in domestic affairs, so Biden is letting the fact he’s declining to invite Netanyahu to the White House speak for itself,” says David Makovsky, director of the Project on the Middle East Peace Process at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a longtime expert in U.S.-Israel relations.

Noting that he has witnessed White House thinking on the proposed legislation “evolve” to where it is now seen to have clear national security implications, Mr. Makovsky says “there’s an urgent realization that our shared values are a pillar of the relationship no less than shared interests.”

“They’re saying,” he adds, “‘You can’t have objectionable values on something as central as democracy and believe you’re still entitled to a White House visit.’”

In the two leaders’ phone conversation Sunday, Mr. Biden told Mr. Netanyahu – who won a sixth term as prime minister in December – that over his long relationship with Israel he has never seen such high social anxiety among Israeli citizens. And he reminded his counterpart – as Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Mr. Netanyahu publicly when he visited Israel in February – that in democracies, major reforms are most successful when carried out with consensus.

“Biden is getting his point across,” Mr. Makovsky says, “and he’s doing it without using a sledgehammer.”

Israel’s proposed legislation would weaken the judiciary’s independence in numerous ways, critics say, but perhaps most significantly it would reduce the Supreme Court’s powers to check and balance government actions.

Indeed, some opponents of the changes suspect the objective of far-right proponents is first and foremost to eliminate the court’s ability to nullify government decisions, in particular those pertaining to the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The reforms would significantly reduce the justices’ ability to review laws and strike them down. Moreover, it would allow a simple majority in the 120-seat Knesset to override Supreme Court rulings, while also giving the government absolute control over judicial appointments.

Window-dressing

Within hours of Mr. Biden’s phone call, the Netanyahu government was airing a number of what it said were tweaks to the package of judicial reforms.

But Mr. Miller describes those changes as window-dressing, adding that they leave intact the most consequential aspects of the reform – those affecting the weight of the Supreme Court in the government’s balance of power.

“They are pushing ahead with a change that will give the government the edge in naming the justices,” says Mr. Miller, who is now a senior fellow in U.S. foreign policy at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

For Mr. Makovsky, Mr. Netanyahu’s narrow field of maneuverability is roughly comparable to that of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who was only able to secure the votes he needed to win the position he coveted by accommodating the demands of the most extreme and far-right members of his caucus.

In a similar way, he says, Mr. Netanyahu was only able to retake the prime minister’s chair by including the far right in his governing coalition – and by sticking to their demands, which include the judicial reforms.

Thus Mr. Netanyahu has in his government two extreme right leaders who joined forces in the last election: Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich of the Religious Zionist Party, and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir of Otzma Yehudit, or Jewish Power.

“Whenever you have rough parity between political forces, a small group with ideas out on the margins is able to wield disproportionate influence,” says Mr. Makovsky.

“We see it [in the United States] with McCarthy forced to give a small group of representatives disproportionate weight. And we see it in Israel,” he adds, “where in order to govern, Netanyahu has named as senior ministers two far-right leaders whose positions threaten the foundations of the U.S.-Israel relationship.”

Mr. Smotrich drew a rebuke from the U.S. after declaring during a weekend visit to France that there is “no such thing” as the Palestinian people. He earlier prompted an international uproar – and comparisons to Nazi behavior – when he called for a West Bank Palestinian town to be “erased.”

Mr. Ben-Gvir has provoked outrage by ordering the demolitions of homes of Arabs in East Jerusalem to continue during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which began Wednesday.

Some in the U.S. have called it an exaggeration to deem Israel’s proposed judicial reforms a threat to the core of the U.S.-Israel relationship, and say the Biden administration should take Mr. Netanyahu at his word when he says Israel will remain a vibrant democracy.

Values and security

But others increasingly sound alarms over the national security implications of the legislation.

“There are more and more indications that normalization between Israel and the Arab countries is facing immense challenges, [while] Israel is gradually losing the support of its good friends in the U.S. and Europe,” says Shira Efron, director of policy research at Washington’s Israel Policy Forum and a senior fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. Indeed, Gulf Arab leaders who have recently established diplomatic ties to Israel have warned that including the far right in the government will harm relations.

Israel’s security concerns and relations with key partners deserve “the full attention of a savvy and experienced national security cabinet,” Ms. Efron says. Instead, “the cabinet includes ministers with zero national security experience,” she adds, with their attention focused domestically “on undermining the court and building the infrastructure for exonerating corrupt politicians.”

Moreover, Mr. Miller says there is a direct correlation between what he calls the “values proposition” in the U.S.-Israel relationship and Israel’s national security. A threat to one, he says, weakens the other.

“The traditional basis for America’s support for Israel is the high coincidence of values along with the high coincidence of interests,” he says. For seven decades, it’s the “values proposition” that has given the relationship its “resilience,” the longtime participant in the bilateral partnership says.

Without the strong common values, he says, the relationship no longer has the bonding element that has made it special.

“You take that values proposition away, and you take away a key part of what the relationship has been,” Mr. Miller says. “If Israel is in conflict with those values, it becomes harder to give them the support the U.S. has provided for decades,” he adds. “And for Israel it becomes a national security issue.”