Rep. Tlaib rejects Israel’s offer to visit relative, cites ‘oppressive conditions’

JERUSALEM — Israel reversed itself, again, on Friday in announcing that Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib could visit, but only to see her grandmother. Ms. Tlaib said: No thanks.

The Michigan congresswoman said Israel’s decision to admit her to the country on “humanitarian grounds” was an attempt to silence and humiliate her.

“I have decided that visiting my grandmother under these oppressive conditions stands against everything I believe in — fighting against racism, oppression & injustice,” Ms. Tlaib said on Twitter. “It would break my grandmother’s heart.”

It was the second flip-flop by the Israeli government in less than 24 hours.

One day earlier, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that his government would not allow Ms. Tlaib or Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn. — a fellow Muslim and first-term House member — to enter Israel on a planned fact -finding mission. A month before that, Israel had said the congresswomen would be welcomed despite their frequent criticism of Israeli policies and support for a pro-Palestinian boycott movement.

President Donald Trump asked Israel to ban the elected American officials, who happen to be his political enemies, and Mr. Netanyahu’s willingness to oblige seemed to drag Israel into U.S. domestic politics and contradicted decades of strong bipartisan support for Israel. The unprecedented move to bar U.S. lawmakers from a country that receives billions of dollars in aid from Congress drew swift criticism from U.S. politicians, American pro-Israel groups and former diplomats.

Mr. Netanyahu’s move seemed to expose his isolation less than a month before a tough election, as allies long accustomed to ceding the role of chief diplomat to him kept silent, and the opposition accused him of hypocrisy and betraying Israel’s interests to please Mr. Trump.