This is a platitude that Antony Blinken made a point of recalling, at the end of his meeting with the Israeli Prime Minister, Benyamin Netanyahu, Monday, January 30, in Jerusalem: the relationship that Washington maintains with Israel is too deep for come down to the disagreements of the governments in place. It was necessary to read in this platitude of the American secretary of State a criticism in hollow. His administration is concerned about the spiral of repression and violence that is accelerating in Jerusalem and the Palestinian territories, as well as declarations of a warmonger from the most right-wing government in the history of Israel, in power since December 2022.
In Israel itself, Washington fears a judicial reform, which must erase the powers of the Supreme Court, and which precipitates thousands of demonstrators in the streets of Tel Aviv. Mr. Blinken made an oblique reference to it. He greeted “a vibrant civil society” and urged Mr. Netanyahu to “build consensus” on any reform. Again, a hollow criticism. “Washington didn’t want to talk about it publicly, notes Eytan Gilboa, professor at the University of Bar-Ilan and expert in Israeli-American relations. Today, he is forced to do so by the scope of this reform, by the speed at which it is advancing and because American Jewish leaders and members of Congress have told the White House that it should be discussed. »
For the past month, Mr. Blinken has been preceded in Israel by the national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, and by the director of the CIA, William Burns. All come to evoke Iran and the death of international negotiations on its nuclear program, never recorded by Washington. They reassure Israel that there is a military option. Then they come to sort out the contradictory messages sent by the new Israeli government. To everyone, Mr. Netanyahu reminds that he is alone at the helm, that he shares ” the interests “ and ” values ” Americans.
A constrained and weakened Netanyahu
However, Mr. Netanyahu seems constrained, weakened. No Israeli party wants to join it anymore, except for the far-right and ultra-Orthodox religious allies on which it depends, with no alternative. They have no international experience. They hold Washington to be a brake on the colonization of the territories. They campaign to restrict the right to aliyah, Jewish immigration. They despise the reformed, assimilated American Jewish community, which is too critical of Israel. On this last point, they join a very close collaborator of Mr. Netanyahu, the Minister for Strategic Affairs, Ron Dermer, for whom Israel must henceforth base its public diplomacy in the United States solely on evangelical Christians, unreserved defenders of Jewish state.
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