Will Biden Finally Invite Netanyahu to the White House?

This week, Israeli President Isaac Herzog will address a joint session of the U.S. Congress and sit down with President Joe Biden for their second meeting in a year. But Herzog’s visit to Washington invariably raises the rather obvious question of who isn’t coming to town.

Seven months after the formation of the Israeli government, isn’t it about time the Biden administration hosts Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu in Washington? If the president can throw a state dinner for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a man who has so badly mauled the world’s largest democracy that Freedom House has moved India from the “free” to the “partly free” category, surely he can suffer through a couple painful hours with his longtime pal Bibi, right?

Not so fast. In a rare intervention in February, Biden made it clear that he saw the Netanyahu government’s proposed judicial overhaul as inconsistent with the shared values on which the U.S.-Israeli relationship rests, and it became increasingly apparent that there would be no Netanyahu visit to the White House until the judicial overhaul was put on ice. In March, Biden said there would be no Netanyahu visit “in the near term.” When asked last week if he was going to invite Netanyahu, the president demurred, referred to the Herzog visit, and noted that “we have other contacts.”

With the first piece of that judicial overhaul about to become law, Biden’s Bibi ban is likely to continue. The last thing the president should want to do amid massive protests in Israel is welcome Netanyahu after he has directly undermined Israeli democracy—not to mention the policies his government is pursuing to annex the West Bank in everything but name.

But when it comes to the internal politics of an ally, principled positions may have their political and practical limits. By the fall, especially as the Netanyahu government approaches the end of its first year in December, Netanyahu’s non-invitation to Washington may become increasingly harder for Biden to defend. Republicans, including former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, are already criticizing the administration over it. And besides, there are serious issues to discuss, including Iran, a volatile Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the White House’s interest in brokering an Israeli-Saudi normalization agreement.

In short, a Netanyahu-Biden meeting in Washington is virtually inevitable. The conundrum for Biden is that he can’t live with Netanyahu but can’t live without him, either.

But you can’t choose your parents or your prime ministers. And Biden is waking up to the inconvenient fact that whatever he thought he knew about his good friend Netanyahu (“Bibi, I don’t agree with a damn thing you say, but I love you,” the president once famously said), the Israeli leader has undergone a change from a difficult partner—cautious and risk-averse—to a desperate, risk-ready politician who seems to stumble from one disaster to the next.

Trapped between an ongoing trial for bribery, fraud, and breach of trust and a coalition with extremist ministers who control his fate, Netanyahu has few good options. Based on the latest polls, which show Netanyahu unable to form a government should elections be held today, he needs to keep his extremist coalition together. And that means catering to the extremists both on the judicial overhaul and on policies designed to annex the West Bank.

Biden, whose approach toward Israeli prime ministers is generally accommodation not confrontation, has had his spine stiffened somewhat by Netanyahu’s slide to the dark side. Last week, Biden again blasted the more extreme ministers in Netanyahu’s government, saying it was “one of the most extremist” governments he’d seen in decades of politics. The clearest manifestation of his upset is his refusal to set a date for Netanyahu to visit Washington.

And it’s clearly beginning to grate on the prime minister, who either out of pique or pride has accepted President Xi Jinping’s invitation to visit China. Netanyahu seems not to realize that when you’re in a hole, the first order of business is to stop digging. He’s certainly not winning any friends in the White House as he tries to jam through a key piece of his judicial overhaul before the Knesset goes into recess at the end of July. In a remarkable statement about the demonstrations against the soon-to-be-passed law, the U.S. National Security Council urged Israeli “authorities to protect and respect the right of peaceful assembly”—a seemingly more appropriate caution for a nondemocratic country.

Is this officially a major crisis in the U.S.-Israeli relationship? Not yet. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who knows Israel well, believes a reassessment of the relationship is inevitable. But Biden has yet to impose serious consequences on Israel for any of its policies, especially on the West Bank, and he is unlikely to do so. Even while he was blasting the extremists in the Netanyahu government, he left room for Netanyahu to work out his problems, expressing the hope that “Bibi will continue to move toward moderation.”

The inconvenient reality for those who want to see Biden get really tough with Netanyahu is this: Biden is a busy guy abroad and at home—trying to manage Russia’s war in Ukraine and NATO unity; tensions with China; and, of course, what is certain to be a hotly contested presidential campaign and election.

If he had his druthers, Biden would rather not hear from Netanyahu until after the president’s reelection, and he certainly wants to avoid—as have most of his predecessors—the awkward, messy, distracting, and potentially politically costly fight with an Israeli prime minister.

As mentioned, Trump and DeSantis have already blasted the president for not inviting Netanyahu to Washington, as has U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Indeed, McCarthy said that if Biden didn’t do so, the speaker himself would invite Netanyahu to Washington to meet with the House of Representatives. It wouldn’t be surprising if the Republicans did in fact try to arrange such a meeting, as they did in 2015—though even Netanyahu would likely balk at coming to town without seeing the president, as that would only drive home his weakness and desperation.

And then there are the reports of the administration’s keen interest in brokering a normalization agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia. If true, Biden will have an incentive to meet with Netanyahu to determine what if anything the president can extract from Israel in exchange for Washington’s heavy lift in meeting Saudi requirements for normalizing with Israel. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman reportedly wants U.S. security guarantees, access to offensive weapons, and assistance with a civilian nuclear program. In return for all this, Biden—who admits a Saudi deal is still a long way off—is in a position to press Israel for restraint in dealing with the Palestinian issue. Whether the president would use this leverage is another matter.

The irony is that a long-sought meeting with Biden may not give Netanyahu nearly the political boost or the victory lap he so desires. Some of Netanyahu’s European visits, which he intended to rally support against Iran, haven’t gone all that well. French President Emmanuel Macron spared Netanyahu public criticism but made clear his serious concerns over Israel’s democratic backsliding. And the Israeli ambassador to France failed to attend the welcoming ceremony. In Germany, Chancellor Olaf Scholz pressed the visiting Netanyahu on judicial reform. And much of the same awaits him in Washington, especially from the Jewish community.

Everywhere Netanyahu goes, his two most far-right ministers—Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir—remain albatrosses around his neck. Indeed, those two ministers and their Knesset delegations were not invited to the annual July Fourth festivities at the U.S. ambassador’s residence in Israel this month. Netanyahu can always rely on support from congressional Republicans, evangelical Christians, and more than few mainstream Democrats. But any visit to Washington would be to a mixed reception at best.

White House meeting or no, it’s evident that the confluence of values and interests that has historically sustained the special character of the U.S.-Israeli relationship is under serious stress. Beneath the bromidic statements about close U.S.-Israeli ties lurk key policy differences. The institutional mechanisms around security, military, and intelligence cooperation will remain strong, but Biden’s trust and confidence in Netanyahu have been seriously depleted.

What’s needed to set the relationship on a better path is a new Israeli government minus its hard-line ministers—and ideally, in time, minus Netanyahu, too. Until that materializes, certainly for the Biden administration, relations are going to remain stuck on a shaky plateau.