Netanyahu appears to thrive on creating tension

In response to US President Joe Biden’s verbal call not to risk Israel’s democracy by overhauling its Supreme Court, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu rudely tweeted that Israel would take its own decisions, “not based on pressures from abroad, even from the best of friends.” A tweet is hardly the most diplomatic tool to use when dealing with Israel’s best friend, financier, and protector.

This exchange took place after Netanyahu was compelled by 12 weeks of mass protests and a threat of a general strike to pause his plan to make the court subservient to the legislature, thereby removing the sole check on the powers of the government-of-the-day and the prime minister.

A longstanding Netanyahu friend, Biden urged him to “walk away” from this decision as he was “very concerned” about the survival of Israeli democracy and warned that Israel “cannot continue down this road.”

Biden said later, “Hopefully the prime minister will act in a way that he can try to work out some genuine compromise, but that remains to be seen.” Biden also stated that Netanyahu would not be invited to the White House “in the near term.”

In addition to being undiplomatic on the part of the Israeli leader, his tweet is ironic because Netanyahu is a past master at pressuring the US, its generally supine partner, to bow to Israeli demands. Netanyahu is regarded by Israelis as an “American” although he was born in Israel and served in the Israeli army. He spent several years as a child and youth in Philadelphia and attended university at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He then worked in the US as a consultant and served at the Israeli embassy in Washington and as Israeli ambassador to the United Nations. He has been long enough in the US to speak English with a US accent.

During his three terms as prime minister Netanyahu has used Israel’s popularity with both houses of Congress to convince the White House and State Department to do whatever he wanted. He and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill are the only foreign leaders to deliver three addresses to joint sessions of the US legislature.

There was, however, a vast difference between the two men. Churchill was a war leader and statesman. His first speech in December 1941 was meant to coordinate British and US efforts to defeat the Germans and Japanese in World War II. He returned to address Congress in 1943 with the aim of boosting the war effort and in 1952 when he tackled resistance to Communism. Churchill was invited to speak on global crises and made a positive impact on US politicians and the public.

Netanyahu is an Israeli politician trying to sell his own personal agenda. During his first, 1996, address he complained that the Palestinians were not living up to their obligations under the Oslo peace process. However, it was Israel which did not deliver on its commitments, continued to colonise the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza and subjugate Palestinians living under occupation. During his 2011 address to Congress, when then Vice President Biden was on the chair in the Senate, Netanyahu focused on Iran as the main threat to the security of the region while Israel has waged war after war against its neighbours and besieged and blockaded Gaza.

He has become fixated on Iran. His latest address to Congress was in 2015. He was controversially invited by the Republican House Speaker and Senate majority leader without notifying the White House ahead of time. Netanyahu’s purpose was to scupper the Obama administration’s effort to conclude the agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear programme in exchange for lifting sanctions. Democrats were furious as this broke a bipartisan consensus on this issue and was seen as an insult to President Barack Obama. While he succeeded in securing the deal, it was abandoned by Donald Trump in 2018 at the bidding of Netanyahu and his US friends.

His efforts prompted Iran, after waiting for a year for the agreement to be rescued, to expand its nuclear facilities, enrich uranium to levels far higher than allowed, amass stockpiles, and curb inspections by International Atomic Energy Agency experts. While Iran vows not to build bombs, it has attained the material and the technical expertise to do so, thanks to Netanyahu, Trump and, since 2021, Biden.

Netanyahu has maintained pressure on the Biden administration not to re-enter the nuclear agreement although Biden promised to do just this when campaigning for the presidency. Instead of honouring this pledge, Biden has prevaricated and procrastinated to the point that he has said the deal is “dead.”

Iran, the IAEA, and European signatories of the agreement continue to call for the deal to be revived.

Biden is too busy mounting a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine to revive an agreement which, when both the US and Iran return to compliance, would deprive Tehran of the means to build bombs and reduce regional tensions.

Netanyahu seems to thrive on tensions: domestic tensions with Israelis; regional tensions with Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan; and now international tensions with the US. This time, however, he has miscalculated.

On the internal level, recent opinion polls have shown only 24 per cent of Israelis back his overhaul of the Supreme Court and his coalition could shed 11 seats of its 64 in the 120-member Knesset if there is a new election. Even in a poll reported on Channel 14, a television network regarded as a mouthpiece for Netanyahu, coalition parties were predicted to get only 58 seats and lose their majority.

On the regional level, he has stepped up his rhetoric against Iran and used Lebanese airspace to bomb Syrian military bases where pro-Iranian militiamen are based. Groups of Israeli extremists have conducted religious events within the Haram al-Sharif, the mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem, in violation of the status quo agreement with Jordan which prohibits non-Muslim prayer.

On the global level, Netanyahu has relied on over-reach, bullying and bluster to get what he wants. This time he has gone too far. He has built a coalition which depends on racist, supremacist parties which have alienated Israel’s longstanding allies, particularly in the US. He has only paused his judicial overhaul. He is prepared to cede to the demand of his extremist coalition partners to jettison Israel’s Supreme Court in exchange for their support in his effort to quash his court cases for bribery, corruption, and breach of trust. He is prepared to trade the independence of Israel’s judiciary for an escape from jail time.