Close ties with US ally, but often rocky

Long before moving into the White House, President Biden compared the relationship between the United States and Israel to that of close friends. “We love one another,” he said, “and we drive one another crazy.”

The United States and Israel are in one of those driving-each-other-crazy phases of their usually tight but often turbulent 75-year partnership.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s quest to rein in the judiciary has become the latest point of contention as he pushed the first part of his package through the Israeli parliament Monday, defying widespread protests and repeated expressions of caution from Biden.

What makes this moment different is that the rift has nothing to do with the foreign policy and national security matters that typically provoke disagreement, like arms sales, Iran’s nuclear program, territorial claims, or the long-running push to forge peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Instead, it concerns a strictly domestic issue inside Israel, namely the balance of power and future of freedom in the one historical bastion of democracy in the Middle East.

The friction among friends has complicated cooperation in other areas where the two allies have common interests. For months, Biden refused to invite Netanyahu to Washington, which prevented at least some meetings between lowerlevel officials.

The president relented last week and agreed to get together at some as-yet-unspecified time and place in the United States this year. But he then felt compelled to issue two public statements making clear that he had not changed his mind about Netanyahu’s drive to limit the power of the courts even as the prime minister is on trial for corruption.