The United States urged Israel to preserve a system of checks and balances ahead of a critical judicial reform vote late Monday night by which the Knesset would strip the courts of the ability to rule that governmental policy was unreasonable.
“Both US and Israeli democracy are built on strong institutions, checks and balances and an independent judiciary,” US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters in Washington.
“The President has said publicly and privately that fundamental reforms like this require a broad base of support to be durable and sustained,” Miller said.
Outgoing US Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides told the Wall Street Journal in an article published Monday that the Biden administration had urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against “going off the rails” as pursues his judicial overhaul plan.
Nides stressed that both he and US President Joe Biden had spoken with Netanyahu about the importance of pursuing a consensus process, explaining that many Israelis want the US to play this role.
“I think most Israelis want the United States to be in their business,” Nides told Journal, adding that interference was the price that comes from a close relationship such as the US and Israeli enjoy.
Biden calls this gov't the most extreme
On Sunday Biden told CNN that this government was the “most extreme” that he had seen. He spoke as a veteran US politician who has often boasted that he has worked with every Israeli government going back to the time of former prime minister Golda Meir.
In the Knesset on Monday Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said he respected both Biden and the strong historic relationship the two countries have enjoyed.
‘It is legitimate,” however, “to have differences of opinion,” Smotrich said.
He took issue, in particular, with Biden’s definition of Israeli extremism which included those who believe that Jews have a right to settle anywhere in Area C of the West Bank, also referred to as Judea and Samaria.
“It is the president's right to criticize our policies and our right and duty to continue to act to fulfill the mission of Israeli citizens, to defend ourselves and fight terrorism and to build our homeland,” Smotrich said.