America’s Israel Conundrum

The fight over the future of Israeli democracy entered a dramatic new stage this week when the right-wing coalition led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu passed into law one element of its sweeping plan to limit the Supreme Court’s power to check government and legislative action. When the government had initially unveiled plans in January to dramatically weaken Israel’s judiciary, protests erupted across the country, eventually leading Netanyahu to pause his plans. He turned instead to a piecemeal approach and revived the legislative effort in early July, igniting even greater protests throughout the country. Now, following Monday’s vote, Israel has entered uncharted territory. Thousands of volunteer reservists have announced their intentions to suspend their service, medical staff is striking, and Israeli society is more polarized than ever.

Israel’s descent into turmoil, the extremist nature of Netanyahu’s coalition, and the potential erosion of democracy in Israel have all provided backwind to long-running debates about U.S. policy toward the country. As Netanyahu pushes Israel toward illiberalism, some believe Washington should cut its close ties with the state, including rethinking military aid to Israel, as New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof argued last week.

Yet there is a strong impulse within the Biden administration to find a way to move forward with Israel. This comports not only with President Joe Biden’s own views, but also with the wider aims of his administration toward the Middle East. These plans are rooted not in support for democracy in the region (where there is very little democracy), but in concerns over the future U.S. posture there. It is a vision based on promoting regional stability and integration, and shaped by the U.S. competition with China and Russia. In this context, on the eve of Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s visit to Washington earlier this month, in a call with Netanyahu, Biden seemed to imply an invitation for a meeting between the leaders. The impulse to work with Israel, and its prime minister, remains strong.

The question of whether to shun or hug Israel misses the mark. The U.S. posture toward Israel should flow from U.S. policy goals, which include values as well as security and economic interests. For the right goal, serious pressure is well worth it, not because tension with Israel is helpful on its own but because the issues at stake are highly consequential.

The United States has valid interests in three different areas, which the administration should pursue despite their seemingly contradictory policy vectors. These include supporting democracy within Israel, which requires pressure on Netanyahu. Whether Washington likes it or not, the United States is a player in Israel’s domestic politics, and Israelis are highly attuned to the message from Washington. Indeed, the hundreds of thousands demonstrating in Israel to try to save Israeli democracy are counting on U.S. support. The United States also has an interest in promoting dignity and real freedom for Palestinians, which requires both concerted pressure and sustained cooperation with Israelis and Palestinians to stave off the possibility of large-scale violence. No less important is the imperative to try to pry open the possibility for conflict resolution down the road, a path currently being closed by Israel’s increasing, de facto annexation of the West Bank. Finally, it is in the U.S. interest to promote a stable and integrated Middle East, which requires working with the Israeli government and Arab states, especially given the prospect of a deal for Israeli-Saudi normalization. U.S. pressure on the first two goals does not contradict Washington’s support of Israel and Saudi Arabia establishing normal diplomatic relations. To the contrary, it makes such an agreement more likely, as normalization can offer Netanyahu a high-stakes off-ramp from his domestic woes.

JUGGLING ACT

No doubt the Biden administration wishes it did not have to deal at all with what’s happening in Israel. But it has little choice. Israel is a close and important security and intelligence partner. More than half of Americans (55 percent) view the country favorably, according to the Pew Research Center. And so does Biden, who just last week affirmed that his love for Israel is “deep-rooted and long-lasting.” And Israel is a key piece of the White House’s vision for the Middle East, where Biden is looking to U.S. partners to play a greater role as Washington focuses on other regions of the world.

Netanyahu’s Israel is a country in the throes of unprecedented domestic upheaval due to the government’s attempt to defang the checks on majoritarian power. It is led by a coalition in which senior cabinet ministers are working openly to make permanent Israeli control over—and disenfranchisement of—millions of Palestinians. It is a government in which extremist ministers are ostensibly charged with calming an increasingly violent West Bank, which is at risk of full-blown confrontation, even while they are actively stoking the flames.

At the center is Netanyahu, who has always been a master political tactician, identifying short-term roadblocks to his agenda and skillfully plotting another path. Despite his forceful rhetoric, he is not known in Israel for his backbone. To the contrary, where politics is concerned, Netanyahu is best described as “the sum of all pressures applied to him.” Accordingly, it is essential that the extremists in his coalition not be the only ones tightening the vise.

Since December, the Biden administration has responded to the formation of Netanyahu’s governing coalition with a calibrated policy of compartmentalization: working with Israel on urgent matters while trying not to seem too friendly to the new government. The White House applied an undeclared no-contact policy with the most extreme elements of the coalition. At the same time, it conducted mostly quiet engagement with the Israeli government over issues it deemed important, including the danger of further escalation of violence in the West Bank. Finally, after some hesitation, the U.S. government started to voice public opposition to Netanyahu’s proposed overhaul of the Israeli judiciary. Biden himself has taken a vocal stance against the judicial overhaul—with the White House stating that "as a lifelong friend of Israel, President Biden has publicly and privately expressed his views that major changes in a democracy to be enduring must have as broad a consensus as possible," a consensus clearly lacking in Israel today.

The question of whether to shun or hug Israel misses the mark.

The erosion of democracy in Israel also undercuts the shared values that both countries frequently tout as a basis for their relationship. Unchecked executive power in Israel would also exacerbate the risk on the Palestinian front, especially when coupled with the annexationist ambitions of the current Israeli government. Although Israeli courts have been generally permissive of settlement activity in the West Bank, they have limited settlements on privately owned Palestinian land, and at times checked administrative decisions to include Palestinian concerns. In 2004, the Supreme Court ordered adjustments, albeit minor, to the path of the “security barrier” between the West Bank and Israel, saying that its route caused too much harm to the Palestinians who lived nearby.

Despite the Biden administration’s distaste for Netanyahu’s domestic politics, it has increased U.S. military exercising with Israel, and for good reason. In early 2023, U.S Central Command, which oversees the Middle East for the U.S. military, and the Israeli military conducted the largest-ever joint exercise, called Juniper Oak. More than 140 aircraft participated, including the kind of long-range bombers and tankers that Israel does not possess. The training exercise also included a U.S. Navy carrier group and forces that focus on digital warfare and space. The intention was to send a signal of deterrence to Iran and of resolve to Washington’s Arab allies. The message was that although U.S. resources are stretched thin and Washington is mostly focused on the competition with China and the war in Ukraine, it remains committed to security in the Middle East. Reliance on local partners, Israel first among them, is a cornerstone of the administration’s approach to future crises, in which these regional allies will be called upon to carry more of the load but will be backed by—and work closely with—the U.S. military.

This juggling act—close cooperation on the one hand, deep political differences on the other—is hard to pull off. It requires constant careful messaging by different government agencies and using one of the Biden administrations’ most valuable assets: its senior officials’ time and attention. The recent call between Biden and Netanyahu is a case in point. What followed an apparently cordial conversation was an unpleasant battle between the countries’ governments over its interpretation. Did Biden invite Netanyahu to the White House before the end of 2023, as Tzachi Hanegbi, Israel's national security adviser, claimed? Or did Biden simply imply that they might meet in the United States—perhaps in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in September, as the administration contended? To quell this confusion, Biden circled back and gave an interview to the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, reiterating his opposition to Israel’s judicial overhaul.

This is the kind of headache that a close relationship with Netanyahu is bound to induce, and a U.S. president might be forgiven for trying to reduce the pain, either by shunning him or by turning a blind eye and embracing a difficult partner. Instead, the United States should use all its levers of influence, worrying less about how its actions look and more about what results they could produce.

THE LEVERAGE

Netanyahu’s stance thus far has been to try to square his domestic pressure with an attempt to get back into the good graces of the Biden administration. In characteristic Netanyahu fashion, he has tried to stave off American ire on settlement expansion while also placating his coalition partners with license for aggressive actions in the West Bank and on the Temple Mount. He passed the latest legislation on the judiciary to his coalition partners’ delight, while trying to downplay in English-language interviews the transformative nature of the reform by describing it as a mere rebalancing of the government’s separation of powers.

As always in Israeli politics, however, foreign policy looms large. Even as the civic contract in Israel implodes, Netanyahu is dreaming of the crown jewel of regional politics: a normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which would be a sea change not only for the two countries but for many of their neighbors as well. Netanyahu himself has touted the possibility of a deal with Saudi Arabia as “a giant leap toward ending the Arab-Israeli conflict,” notably excluding the Palestinians, of course.

Such a deal—now being considered seriously in Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United States—would be a legacy-defining achievement for Netanyahu. To pursue it, he needs no cajoling by the United States. To the contrary, this is a rare moment where Netanyahu might actually deliver something meaningful on the Palestinian issue in exchange for burnishing his legacy. Of course, his notorious caution, even cowardice on these matters, could get in the way. If he did deliver, however, Israel would get something it has always craved: acceptance by most of the major Arab countries. It would expect full normalization of diplomatic and commercial ties, and diplomatic cover for non-Arab Muslim countries to also establish ties with Israel, most notably Indonesia, home to the world’s largest Muslim population.

There are those on the right in Israel who believe that it would require mere symbolic gestures on the Palestinian front—for example, reiteration of Netanyahu’s vague commitment in 2009 to a two-state solution, or language on the sanctity of Jerusalem to Muslims as well as Jews and Christians. But a deal of this importance would likely require far more. In The New York Times, Friedman argues that Israel would need to commit to stop settlement expansion and to transfer territory in the West Bank from full Israeli control (Area C, under the Oslo Accords) to areas with more Palestinian authority (Areas A and B). Promises and commitments, like symbolic gestures, would not hurt, but the key is the scope of the territorial and functional concessions. A meaningful transfer of territory would include more than the Palestinian populated sectors in Area C. It must create far greater contiguity for Palestinians in the West Bank, where the Palestinian Authority currently has some control over more than 160 separated enclaves. It would need to provide the PA with more actual authority over its own territory and over access to it, via border crossings. Israel may offer the PA a path back to relevance and domestic legitimacy if it chose to pursue such moves. In short, any transfer of territory would need to advance the Palestinians in the West Bank dramatically toward a reality of “state-minus,” rather than the “autonomy-minus” they currently have. For a meaningful change, any deal would also entail accelerating the easing of the nearly two-decades-long blockade of the oft-forgotten Gaza Strip.

Netanyahu is best described as “the sum of all pressures applied to him.”

Actions such as these would still not produce Israeli-Palestinian peace, of course, but they would reverse a years-long trend of increased settlement encroachment into the West Bank and the stifling closure of the Gaza Strip. For the first time since 2005, Palestinian autonomy would increase in a meaningful way.

These types of concessions would not be possible with Netanyahu’s current coalition partners some of whom are opposed to the PA’s very existence, let alone any hint toward conflict resolution. Indeed, these types of concessions may not be possible with this Israeli prime minister, though it is worth exploring the possibility, given the stakes for him and the fact that Netanyahu is expecting a demand for meaningful moves on the West Bank. But Netanyahu would need a new coalition to pull it off. Of course, a change in Israeli government should not be a U.S. goal, but its prospect should certainly not hinder U.S. policy either. Usually, Netanyahu would balk at any threat of his coalition fracturing, but a deal with Saudi Arabia could be the rare historic win that could push him to turn to the political center to form an alternative coalition. Normalizing ties with Saudi Arabia might also provide political cover for some in the Israeli political center to join Netanyahu, despite their deep, hard-earned distrust of him and the political risk they would be taking. An Israeli political reconfiguration in the current environment would be a tall order and not without domestic Israeli downside, but not impossible in the context of normalization with Saudi Arabia.

More important, even if a deal such as this cannot be reached with the current Israeli leader, it is crucial that the Palestinian contours of an Israeli-Saudi normalization deal be set clearly and publicly, with U.S. as well as Saudi backing. This would allow any future normalization deal—now or in years to come—to start from a place that would secure not just Israeli and Saudi interests but also the longstanding U.S. policy goal of a better future for Palestinians and Israelis alike.

Saudi Arabia demands that any deal allow it to develop a civilian nuclear program (which, while civilian in nature now, could risk future military nuclear proliferation) and access to advanced U.S. weapons. For Saudi Arabia, if the deal included not only symbolic elements on the Palestinian front but also meaningful change in the West Bank, it could show the world that normalization with Israel is not a betrayal of the Palestinian cause. It could strengthen the Saudi claim to leadership in the Arab world.

As the United States inevitably reassesses its stance toward Israel, it should set aside the debate over the relationship itself and focus squarely on U.S. policy goals. The policy risks today are high: deep damage to Israeli democracy, conflagration in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the closing of the door for Israeli-Palestinian conflict resolution. Meanwhile the opportunities are no less dramatic: an opening not only on the Arab-Israeli front but the Palestinian one as well, now or down the road. The United States should worry less about the atmospherics of its relationship with Israel and instead focus on what is needed to achieve its policy goals.