The moment of truth has arrived. The gloves are off and the Biden administration is headed full speed for confrontation with Israel that could send bilateral relations down a time tunnel back to the lows of the "reassessment" from late 1974 to the summer of 1975 or the crisis over construction in Ramat Shlomo that overshadowed the visit of then-Vice President Biden in March 2010.
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But while these severe crises were focused on specific issues and didn't spill over into all dimensions of the American-Israeli alliance, this time we are talking about an amalgam of several controversial issues that have risen to the surface at the same time and which threaten not only the commonality of values between the two allies but also the importance of Israel as a strategic asset for the United States in the Middle East.
Specifically, extraordinarily grave pronunciations by senior administration officials – with regard to the annulment of the Disengagement Law (which appears to violate the Israeli agreement at the recent Sharm el-Sheikh summit to freeze building permits in the settlements for a period of four months), comments by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich about the recent events at Hawara and the inexistence of a Palestinian people, and of course the extensive judicial reform – encompass both political and normative aspects.
Therefore, they constitute a direct threat to the long alliance between Washington and Jerusalem. They also diminish the chances that the Biden administration will return to the region as a mediator between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The administration has been ready to renumerate Riyadh by supplying advanced weaponry as an incentive to the Saudis to join the Abraham Accords, fully and publicly. And as if all that were not enough, the "Missionary Bill" tabled by United Torah Judaism (Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has in the meantime expressed his reservations about the bill) that would make any form of proselytization a criminal offense has made things even worse yet
While the liberal public (including Reform and Conservative Jewish communities in the United States) is vociferously opposed to the judicial reform, which it believes endangers the very foundations of democracy and the common values of the Israeli-US alliance, the "Missionary Bill" could severely erode both Evangelical Christian and wider Republican support for Israel. These groups have provided Israel with a strong security net in recent years, while other groups in American society could also come out against this new initiative.
In view of all of the above, Netanyahu finds himself facing fateful decisions: Should he give greater weight to internal considerations and his desire to maintain the existing Coalition at any cost, even at the expense of rehabilitating ties with the US, or should he make a volte-face and put Israel's diplomatic ties, especially those with Washington, at the top of his agenda, and pay the political price for doing so. The choice is his!
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