President Joe Biden's interview on CNN on Sunday marks a new and worrying phase in the ongoing cold war between Washington and Jerusalem in recent months.
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Parsing his words, one can get a sense that there is not much left from the foundation of the special relationship that has for many decades served as a linchpin in the ongoing ties, providing Israel with a clear safety net and a stable defensive shield, albeit with the occasional clash on strategic issues.
Even though Biden's comments echoed the message he conveyed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in March, what made this interview special is that the US president didn't try to tone down the rhetoric or tread lightly as is customary among friends. He laid it bare his grievances and criticism for everyone to see while creating a clear linkage between Israel's conduct toward the Palestinians (especially when it comes to settlements) and the degree to which the US was going to help strike a normalization deal with Saudi Arabia.
Biden, implicitly, doubled down on the formula according to which he will not help the normalization process unless Netanyahu helps restrain the extreme elements in his government, which he describes as the "most extreme" in decades.
This time around Biden did not say that reaching a broad consensus on judicial reform was a precondition for having the US court Riyadh join the Abraham Accords, but one cannot assume this is no longer part of Biden's terms, since this issue forms – as far as he is concerned – an integral part of the ideological and value-based alliance between the two nations
As if that was not enough, when asked about the controversial issue of having the two hold a bilateral meeting, the White House occupant took off the gloves and sent a zinger toward his erstwhile friend by saying that President Isaac Herzog will soon visit Washington – as if he was a symmetrical alternative to Netanyahu with wide-ranging executive powers. He also hinted that he was unpleased with the Israeli effort to knock on China's door ahead of Netanyahu's upcoming visit there amid an ever-increasing rivalry between Washington and Beijing, with the latter seeking to supplant Uncle Sam as the world's leading economic and military superpower.
This is a slippery slope that has eclipsed other spats between Israeli and American leaders; Biden's rhetoric brings back memories of the cold shoulder Israel got from the Eisenhower administration and makes the "reassessment" threat of Gerald Ford and Henri Kissinger pale in comparison.
The ball is now in Netanyahu's court. Netanyahu will soon have to decide whether national security considerations trump domestic politics or vice-versa because his maneuvering room is rapidly shrinking.
Professor Abraham Ben-Zvi and Dr. Gadi Warsha's upcoming book, published by Lamda-The Open University Press, is called "Knock of every door: Israel's foreign policy 1948-2018" (Hebrew).
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