New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote in a column Tuesday that a reassessment by the United States of ties with Israel was "inevitable" due to the "unprecedented radical behavior" by the Israeli government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
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Friedman claimed that Netanyahu was being "led around by the nose" by "extreme" cabinet members, such as National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, risking a breakdown in Israel-US ties and a civil war in Israel.
He also claimed that the judicial reform undermined ties with the US.
"Such a huge change to Israel's widely respected judicial system, which has guided the emergence of a remarkable start-up economy, is something that should be done only after study by nonpartisan experts and with a broad national consensus," Friedman wrote. "That is how real democracies do these things, but there has been none of that in Netanyahu's case. It underscores that this whole farce has nothing to do with judicial 'reform' and everything to do with a naked power grab by each segment of Netanyahu's Coalition."
Friedman also accused the Netanyahu government of "occupying the West Bank" and opposing "the establishment of a Palestinian state."
"Netanyahu's steady destruction of this shared fiction is now posing a real problem for other US and Israeli shared interests: It threatens the stability of Jordan, a vital US and Israeli interest. It is driving the Arab states that joined with Israel in the Abraham Accords to take a step back. It is giving the Saudis real pause about moving ahead with normalization with such an unpredictable Israeli regime," he wrote.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu, who came to power in December, is yet to receive an invitation to the White House. President Joe Biden has recently said that he was not planning to invite the Israeli prime minister any time soon.
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