US President Joe Biden received his Israeli counterpart, Isaac Herzog, at the White House on Tuesday, in a gesture that, until Monday, was considered a slight on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But on the eve of the official visit of the head of the Jewish State, the White House issued an official invitation to Netanyahu, still without a specific date or place, which has eased months of tensions with the head of government and opens the doors of Washington for the first time. time since he resumed power in December. The invitation reversed Biden’s last decision, last March, to avoid any meeting with Netanyahu “in the short term.”
“I bring a message of greetings and gratitude from the people of Israel, from the entire country, from all sides of the political spectrum,” replied Herzog, whose role is largely ceremonial, but who in March was forced to intervene to stop the crisis unleashed by the controversial reform of the Supreme Court. “I was pleased to learn of his conversation with Prime Minister Netanyahu, focused on our strong military cooperation,” Herzog said, “because there are some enemies of ours who sometimes confuse the fact that we may have some differences. [con EE UU] with damage to our unbreakable bond.” The same adjective used by President Biden to define the bilateral relationship.
“My heart and soul are also in Israel, in the heated debate that we are experiencing as a society. It’s a heated debate, but it’s also a virtue and a tribute to the greatness of Israeli democracy. Let me reiterate that Israeli democracy is strong and resilient. We are experiencing painful situations, heated debates, challenging moments, but I sincerely believe (…) that we should always try to find a friendly consensus,” Herzog concluded, according to the transcript released by his office, before the two leaders met behind closed doors. for about 40 minutes. The reactivation of the protests for judicial reform and the latest military operations in the West Bank have contributed to increasing the tension to which Herzog has referred.
The controversial reform of the Supreme Court, which seeks to greatly undermine its independence and subordinate it in practice to the Executive; the expansion of settlements in the West Bank and the retroactive authorization of colonies that were built in that territory without approval, such as Eviatar —one of the so-called output, illegal both by Israel and by international law — are reasons for concern and criticism for Biden. White House officials on Monday declined to comment directly on the president’s motives for extending the invitation, although they did clarify that the prospect of a meeting does not imply that the president will abandon his objections to some of Netanyahu’s more extreme measures. Biden himself has described the current Israeli government as “one of the most extremist Israeli coalitions” that he has seen since his relations with the country began in the 1970s.
The announcement puts an end to an anomaly: Netanyahu is the first Israeli head of government since 1969, when Richard Nixon hosted Golda Meir, who has not officially visited Washington at this point, almost seven months after returning to power. The statement does not specify, however, that the invitation is to the White House, only to the US.
On the eve of Herzog’s visit, the deepening division among Democrats in Congress over the degree of support for Israel, or even over the advisability of supporting its traditional Middle Eastern ally, along with Egypt, has become apparent. The most progressive democrats openly condemn the Jewish state, while other co-religionists strive to reconcile their support for the country with criticism of its current government. Several Democratic deputies, such as Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib (the first Palestinian-American congresswoman) and Jamaal Bowman, have announced that they will be absent from the speech that Herzog will deliver this Wednesday before the US Congress.
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While Biden and Herzog met, tens of thousands of Israelis demonstrated in different parts of the country against judicial reform. It has been one of the so-called “Days of Resistance”, with dozens of protests in different parts of the country that complement the massive demonstrations that take place every Saturday, with Tel Aviv as the epicenter, since last January. This type of conference was common until last March, when Netanyahu was forced to temporarily paralyze the reform and start a dialogue process, with the mediation of the president, who has collapsed.
![Police use water cannon to disperse a protest against judicial reform in Tel Aviv on Tuesday.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/kFewHT7qSU4TdPrVLfnn6Y6jgYU=/414x0/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/XQE5ERHM353I5FEFC7EPYD6CHQ.jpg)
The failure of the negotiations and Netanyahu’s willingness to go ahead with the reform have led his detractors to resume this type of protest and step on the accelerator in recent weeks, with actions such as trying to block the country’s main airport (Tel Aviv ), highways and train stations. Especially now that the Government is determined to carry out one of the key laws of the reform package, which would deprive the Supreme Court of the ability to annul those decisions of the Government, ministers or elected public officials that it considers “unreasonable”. The Knesset, the national Parliament, is scheduled to vote next week on the last two readings (usually on the same day) necessary for the text to become law, after its approval last week at first reading.
Within this pulse against time, the protesters have taken to the streets again this Tuesday. The Police have arrested 45 people – a similar number to the previous similar days – and used water cannons to disperse the crowd that blocked an avenue in Tel Aviv. The organizers have also announced the start of a march on foot, about 60 kilometers away, from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, seat of the Government and Parliament.
The opposition to the reform has an important derivative in the army, where hundreds of reservists and even active soldiers had already threatened to stop carrying out certain orders if the reform continued its course. This Tuesday, 161 Air Force reservists, including several commanders, have released a letter stating that they will stop going to their posts, which are voluntary, considering that the approval of the law that would knock down the reasonableness clause ” it would drastically change the essence and face of the country, and would transform it from a democracy into a dictatorship.”
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