Netanyahu was an inexhaustible source of unwavering support for Donald Trump in office, not publicly criticizing the unpredictable and often spiteful president. The 71-year-old man celebrated almost all of the Trump administration’s foreign policy initiatives in the Middle East, becoming his most visible international cheerleader.
With an upcoming election, a third national blockade and an imminent resumption of his trial on corruption charges, Israel’s oldest leader must work with the man who expelled Trump from the Oval Office.
Biden’s relationship with Israel dates back to almost half a century, when he met then Prime Minister Golda Meir in 1973 as a freshman senator from Delaware. Since then, it has become a “very emotional bond with Israel,” a former Obama administration official told CNN. “He sees Israel through this lens and as a true democracy in a region not characterized as such.”
Biden and Netanyahu developed their friendship for the first time in the 1980s, when Biden was a young senator serving on the Foreign Affairs Committee and Netanyahu was serving at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC. Over the years, the two men met, met each other’s families and kept in touch while Netanyahu rose in politics to become Israel’s prime minister in 1996.
When Netanyahu lost his election to Ehud Barak three years later, “Biden kept in touch with him, wrote him an occasional note, things that politicians would not normally do,” said a source familiar with the relationship. “I know Bibi liked it. Biden didn’t treat him like a past.” Over the years, Netanyahu stopped at Biden’s office to pay a visit on his trips to Washington.
But the friendship was tested when Biden became vice president of Barack Obama. Netanyahu gave an infamous lecture on Middle East policy at the White House in 2011 and then introduced it in his 2019 election campaign.
When Biden visited Israel in 2010, the Netanyahu government announced the construction of a new settlement in East Jerusalem, which then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called an “insult”.
“The last years of the Obama administration have been difficult. Some team members will remember this, but [Biden is] it will have no interest in fueling tensions, “said a source familiar with the relationship. Netanyahu clashed with Obama about negotiations with the Palestinians, and again more openly about the nuclear deal with Iran.
‘I don’t agree with anything you say, but I love you’
But the dynamic has changed.
Netanyahu has long since become a political chameleon, changing from the prime minister who endorsed a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in an important speech in 2009 to the leader who endorsed Trump’s vision for peace in the Middle East an decade later, which discarded any conventional notion of two states for two peoples. He led center, center right and right governments in his 14 years in office, but no period has been as good for him – or as easy for him – as the Trump administration. Trump was the gift of Netanyahu that continued to be offered.
In return, Netanyahu seemed to align Israel increasingly closely with the Republican Party, even going so far as to name a new settlement in the Golan Heights in honor of the former president, called Trump Heights. When Netanyahu joined Trump at the White House to sign the Abraham Agreements alongside the Foreign Ministers of the Emirates and Bahrain, the Israeli leader did not meet any Democratic politicians.
Ron Dermer, Israeli ambassador to the United States and one of the closest to Netanyahu, was a frequent visitor to the White House. Dermer’s term ended on the day the Biden government took office.
Israeli Minister Tzachi Hanegbi insists that Netanyahu’s policies have never been pro-Republican or pro-Democratic, but aligned only with Israel’s needs.
“Our policy is always bipartisan,” said Hanegbi, “but of course [Netanyahu] has always been very satisfied with Trump’s policies. “
“When we will have a great relationship with the Biden government – and we will have a great relationship with the new government – it does not mean that we are pro-Democrats and anti-Republicans,” he said. “Chemistry, intimacy, mutual recognition of each other’s passion for their country – these are things that can create credibility in each other’s policies.”
Should Netanyahu treat Biden as a friend or an enemy?
But Netanyahu is now in the middle of a fourth election campaign in two years, with no guarantee that the country will be able to break the endless election cycle. Netanyahu benefited politically from the attack on Obama, showing the Israeli public that he had the courage to face an American leader. Now he must decide whether to do this under Biden.
“Netanyahu is a supreme diplomat, but when it comes to the United States, he bears the burden of his almost explicit loyalty to the Republican Party,” said Dani Dayan, former Israeli consul general in New York and a New Hope candidate, challenging Netanyahu’s Likud in the March 23 election. “Israel’s next prime minister will have a lot to do to restore the bipartisan relationship.”
Netanyahu is under attack by Gideon Sa’ar, a right-wing ideological politician who separated from Netanyahu’s Likud party to form the New Hope party. Despite Sa’ar’s opposition to territorial concessions and a two-state solution, he promised to restore bipartisan support for Israel, positioning himself to be a better partner for Biden.
“I will rebuild Israel’s good and balanced relations with both sides,” promised Sa’ar at a Zoom meeting with AIPAC. “As prime minister, I will work with President Biden and his government to emphasize the importance of not returning to the previous agreement.”
Biden has a strong belief in foreign policy built in part on personal relationships, analysts told CNN, but his friendship with Netanyahu is likely to be tested by political pressure in the coming months. The election is just a challenge, and it may not even be the first with the potential to damage the relationship.
The Biden government’s guidance on a nuclear deal with Iran tops the list of priorities for Israel. The original nuclear deal was the source of some of the most heated disputes between Obama and Netanyahu, highlighted in the prime minister’s decision to speak before a joint session of Congress in 2015, a speech Obama did not attend.
“Israel’s relations with Obama were icy, they started badly and never recovered,” said David Makovsky, director of the Washington Institute of Middle East Studies. “But Biden is someone the Israelis know. He has been around for a long time.”
Still, Biden should not put negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians at the top of his agenda, according to a former Obama official who worked in the region, who said the government “does not want to spend political capital” on the issue.
“With Biden, there will be no realization that he wants to get [Netanyahu]”said veteran diplomat Dennis Ross, who served as a negotiator in the Middle East and an adviser to three US administrations.
“This is not how this relationship would be,” added Ross. “A perception grew in Israel that Obama was not fair to Israel. Facing an American president who doesn’t seem fair is seen as a good thing in Israel. Raising an American president who is seen as fair is not great. Biden is widely seen as fair. “
Andrew Carey and Vivian Salama of CNN contributed to this report.