US-Israeli relations in crisis: Axios
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US-Israeli relations have deteriorated reaching an all-time worst three months following Netanyahu assuming office.
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, right, arrive to attend a cabinet meeting at the Prime Minister's office in occupied al-Quds, Feb. 23, 2023 (AP)
US-Israeli relations have deteriorated to reach an all-time worst three months after Netanyahu assumed office.
After weeks of increased tensions over the judicial reform legislation, the US has reportedly summoned the Israeli ambassador in Washington Mike Herzog in protest of the law passed today repealing the decision to disengage Israeli settlements from the north of the West Bank, according to Axios.
Read more: 'Israel' repeals law that sanctioned four West Bank settlements
Officials in the Biden administration told Axios that they had long anticipated a conflict with Netanyahu's government but had made every effort to postpone. Kenesset’s decision to repeal the 2005 disengagement law was the last straw. The White House described it as a “provocation” and a violation of the commitments pledged by "Israel" to the US.
On his part, Netanyahu slammed the White House’s criticism of the repeal. He described the law as “discriminatory and humiliating to the Jews” such that it forbids them from “living” in what he described as " their historic homeland."
The White House has long been weary of Netanyahu’s decisions and appointments for ministerial posts however the latter chose to brush off these concerns for the sake of strategic cooperation on common interests in the region i.e. contending Iran and proliferating the normalization agreements also called the Abraham Accords.
After Smotrich’s revisionist remarks about Palestinian history and genocidal comments about Hawara, the White House officially condemned his remarks, and boycotted him during his visit to Washington.
The Democrat-Netanyahu grievances are a recurrent complication in US-Israeli bilateralism. A discrepancy in the tactics of consolidating Israeli colonialism; whereby the latter adopts a blunt tactic and the former adopts a sugar-coated one.
Read more: 'Nasrallah reads us well'; 'Israel is falling apart': Israeli media
The Secretary-General of Hezbollah, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, is "reading the situation in Israel correctly," and everyone observing the events in the entity "realizes that Israeli society is falling apart," the military affairs commentator of the Israeli Channel 13, Alon Ben David, said on Tuesday.
Read more: Israelis rallying for another protest against judicial reform
Since the introduction of the draft law at the beginning of January by Netanyahu's government, widespread protests erupted across "Israel".
According to Israeli media, if the process of enacting judicial amendments continues without dialogue, without reaching a settlement, and without broad consensus on the principles of Herzog's proposal, "at the end of the month, we will reach legislation with the second and third readings."
And then "we will lose all control," and it can be assumed, in advance, that the Supreme Court will likely reject the judiciary reform, noting that from that moment on, "Israel" will be in a deep legislative crisis from which there would be no way out.
Israeli media pointed out that "Israel" would face the "destruction of the Third Temple" if it does not put an end to the initiative of judicial amendments in the coming weeks and reach a settlement.
