Biden will meet Israel’s President after inviting Netanyahu

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President Joe Biden will host his Israeli counterpart Isaac Herzog in Washington on Tuesday, a day after inviting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the US amid tensions between traditional allies over the hardline policies of Israel’s new government.

Biden’s decision to invite Herzog before Netanyahu, whose powers are largely ceremonial, has been widely interpreted as a sign of US concerns about his far-right government’s agenda in Israel, which includes a The bitterly disputed judicial overhaul and settlement include speeding up construction. occupied the West Bank.

Herzog – who will also meet Vice President Kamala Harris, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and address a joint session of the Houses of Congress – stressed ahead of his visit that the US-Israel relationship is “above and beyond any and all disagreements”. .

“The alliance between Israel and the United States is unbreakable and irreconcilable,” he said. “Our enemies should not underestimate us.”

Biden held a phone conversation with Netanyahu on Monday in which he invited the Israeli prime minister to the US. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the visit would take place “at some point eventually”, adding that the details were “still being worked out”.

Netanyahu’s office said the conversation with Biden had been “long and warm”, but Kirby stressed that the fact that Biden extended the invitation to Netanyahu – seven months after he took office – does not mean that The US administration’s concerns about his government’s policies have disappeared.

“You must not turn a blind eye to the fact that they had talks today and they will meet again in the autumn, we have less concerns over these judicial reforms or some extremist activities and the behavior of some members. Netanyahu cabinet,” Kirby told reporters. “Those concerns are still valid. They are troubling.”

Kirby’s comments came a week after Biden himself issued an unusually strong public criticism of Netanyahu’s cabinet, saying in an interview with CNN that it contained some of the “most extreme” figures he had seen in his 50 years with Israeli governments. was encountered in contact with.

He drew attention to Israel’s policies in the West Bank, which Palestinians want as the center of a future state but which Israel has occupied since 1967, and where Netanyahu’s government consists of Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben- Ultra-nationalists like Gavir are insisting. Further expansion of settlements, which most of the international community considers illegal.

“It’s not all of Israel’s problem anymore in the West Bank, but they are a part of the problem,” Biden said. “Especially what those members of the cabinet say. , , ‘We can settle wherever we want, (Palestinians) have no right to live here’, etc.’

US officials have also repeatedly expressed concern about a series of judicial changes made by Netanyahu’s government that are designed to weaken the powers of Israel’s top court.

Government officials have stressed that the changes are necessary to rein in an overly active judiciary that uses powers it was never formally granted to advance a partisan leftist agenda.

But critics see them as a brazen power-grabbing that will fundamentally undermine Israel’s checks and balances, pave the way for the removal of minority rights, and damage the economy.

Since the proposals were unveiled in January, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets in protest. More demonstrations followed on Tuesday, with protesters blocking roads across the country. The doctors are also scheduled to observe a two-hour warning strike on Wednesday.