Israel: Benyamin Netanyahu is trying to reassure American ally

Secretary of State Antony Blinken went to Jerusalem, while a wave of repression and violence degenerates in the holy city and in the West Bank.

by Louis Imbert (Jerusalem, correspondent)

It is a commonplace that Antony Blinken wanted to recall, at the end of his interview with Israeli Prime Minister, Benyamin Netanyahu, Monday, January 30, in Jerusalem: the relationship that Washington maintains with Israel is Too deep to summarize the disagreements of the governments in place. It was necessary to read in this platitude of the American Secretary of State a hollow criticism. Its administration is concerned about the spiral of repression and violence which accelerates in Jerusalem and in the Palestinian territories, as statements go to the war of the most right of the history of Israel, in power since December 2022.

In Israel itself, Washington fears legal 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 allusion to it. He praised “a vibrant civil society” and enjoined Mr. Netanyahu to “build a consensus” on any reform. Again, a hollow review. “Washington did not 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 by the extent of this reform, by speed to Which she advances and because American Jewish leaders and members of the Congress said to the White House that she had to mention it. “

For a month, Mr. Blinken has been preceded in Israel by the National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, and by CIA director William Burns. All come to evoke Iran and the death of international negotiations on its nuclear program, never acted by Washington. They reassure Israel on the existence of a military option. Then they come to sort the contradictory messages sent by the new Israeli government. To each, Mr. Netanyahu recalls that he is alone at the helm, that he shares “the interests” and “the values” American.

a constrained and weakened Netanyahu

However, Mr. Netanyahu seems constrained, weakened. No more Israeli party wishes to join him, outside the extreme right and ultraorthodox religious allies on which he depends, without alternative. They have no international experience. They hold Washington for a brake on the colonization of the territories. They campaign to restrict the right to Alya, Jewish immigration. They despise the American Jewish community, reformed, assimilated, too critical of Israel. At the latter point, they join a very close collaborator of Mr. Netanyahu, the Minister of Strategic Affairs, Ron Dermer, for whom Israel must now base his public diplomacy in the United States on Evangelical Christians, defenders without reservations of the Jewish State.

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/Media reports cited above.